Fueling the Fire of Faith

Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive. Serve the Lord (Romans 12:11 NIVR).

I was never a camper so I would probably not have really had the insight on keeping fires going, but for my one winter in North Carolina.  Having lived in South Florida for over 50 years, I spent from December to March that year in front of my fireplace.  And I learned very quickly that in order for the fire to stay hot, I had to keep adding fuel.  The key, however, was to add the fuel before it appeared the fire needed it.  If I waited until it looked like the fire was about to go out, it was too late.  The fire was not hot enough to burn the new wood.

As I consider the lesson I learned about real fires, the parallel to this scripture makes perfect sense.  In order to keep the fire of God going in my heart – to keep it alive – I must not wait until I am so spiritually drained that my fire is about to die.  Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14:  But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 

The more I allow myself to be drawn into a natural mindset, the less I will be able to discern the things of the Spirit.  That means that if I allow myself to become dull spiritually, it takes more effort to make the fire burn.  While the Bible teaches that I am saved and sealed by God’s Spirit until the day of redemption, it also teaches that I must now renew my mind by the washing of the Word because the mind and the spirit are different.  My spirit is one with Christ, but my mind is still linked to this world through my senses.  And it is that on-going battle we, as believers, must fight every day – to make the things I cannot see, hear, taste, and touch more real than the things I can.  And that is what the Bible calls faith.  It is the key to keeping the fire going.

So how do we stoke the fire of faith?  The Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17).   Obviously that verse is not talking about hearing something through our physical ear, or everyone who physically hears God’s Word would have faith.  It is the kind of hearing Jesus spoke about when He spoke of eyes that see and ears that hear.  He was talking about the ability to rightly discern everything in this life through the filter of eternity.  Only when we walk with this eternal perspective can we really serve the Lord with a fire that never goes out.  So, the fuel we add is the Word of God, which stokes the fire of faith and we need to add it even when we feel like we are spiritually doing well.

Today, I will add the fuel of God’s Word to the fire of my heart so that I will have a continual source of heat for what lies ahead of me in the next 24 hours.