What’s your fire?

“It is dangerous to arrive in eternity with possibilities that you have prevented from becoming actualities…Trusting in God, I have ventured, but I have failed – there is peace and rest and God’s confidence in that. I have not ventured – it is an utterly unhappy thought, a torment for all eternity.”
Soren Kierkegaard (Extracted from ‘Who Stands Fast’)
What fires you up? What gets you going? What kinds of adventure do you want to take with Jesus? What are you passionate about? Come on! Every Christian is passionate about something right? It’s what makes up the DNA of a follower of Jesus, because if we are all shaped in the image of Christ (as the Apostle Paul suggests to the churches he writes to) then we would get passionately fired up about the things Jesus himself was fired up about.
Once again I have been profoundly touched by one of my favourite authors/speakers Mick Duncan. I just finished reading ‘Who Stands Fast?’ It was in the final chapters that I really engaged this deep yearning to see Christians around the world get excited about the things Jesus gets excited about, and I mean so passionately engaged with the story and creation of God through Jesus that we are moved into action without question. People driven by faith and passion rather than apathy and excuses. People actually stepping out into wild adventures with Jesus.
Churches attempt to motivate people in all kinds of ways with ‘purpose driven’ programs and spiritual gift surveys. While they might excite the majority for a while, the excitement is generally short lived and we begin the search for the next exciting program. Before you know it you’re a junky for programs and conferences but in actuality, there have been no real changes in your life, there are no real stories of adventures with Jesus to speak of and the things you’re passionate about have been suppressed and you’re not sure what to do with that.
I often have conversations with people after such experiences, you could call it ‘follow up’ to see how people are going to implement their new learning to engage the adventure of being a Christ follower. The most common response I get is, ’I’m praying about it’, or ‘I’m waiting for God to tell me what to do’. I sorry but the only tone I hear in those responses is excuse and avoidance. I am the first to advocate for consultation with God but most of the time the people I’ve spoken with are still waiting 5 years later! The prophet Micah tells his people, ‘For God has shown you what is good…’ God has already revealed both before Jesus and through Jesus what is required of us, so what are we waiting for?
Mick writes, “It seems many Christians are waiting for God to do something when in fact God may be waiting for them…express yourself not as a waiter but as a decision maker and take initiative in the war zone as a Christ-soldier.” (p77-78) I agree with Mick, what exactly are we waiting for? My theory is we have already made our decisions then we spend the rest of our time having internal battles with ourselves about why we should or shouldn’t act.
So in Mick’s final chapter he calls on the stories of those who have gone before us as models for our movement. These are people who have discovered their fire and acted upon it, they have found the cause in their context where the Good News needs to reign true. There is injustice all around us everyday yet many of us are not outraged enough at it to do anything about it. Mick refers to such people, in this chapter, as Ehud (see book of Judges Old Testament), Rosa Parks (Part of USA’s Civil right movement), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (took a stand against Hitler in WW2) and of course Jesus who was so outraged at the injustices both in the wider region as well as within the religious system he was a part of, that his every breath was used to speak out and act against it to the point where he was killed for it. Bonhoeffer records in his poetry ‘Stations on the road to freedom’ before he was killed, ‘Dare to do what is just…’
Do we dare to act on the passion that wells up within us when we are transformed by the heart of Christ? Jesus says to his disciples, ‘you are the light of the world…you are the salt of the earth’, we are to be the light of Christ in all that means setting out on wild adventures with Jesus in our everyday. You don’t need a special program or spiritual gift survey to tell you what you’re passionate about. What’s your fire? Follow it!
“We delude ourselves into thinking that to refrain from venturing is modesty, and that it must please God as humility. No,no! Not to venture means to make a fool of God- because all he is wanting is that you go forth.”
Soren Kierkegaard (Extracted from ‘Who Stands Fast’)

Shalom
Mark