Today we’re leaving camp and heading home. It has been an awesome week spending time with students and seeing God work in their lives. I’ve spent a lot of weeks at a lot of different camps, though. I’ve seen God work in students’ lives, I’ve seen students make commitments and I’ve seen those commitments fade as time moved on.
That’s a lighter faith and God has called us to so much more.
Our faith can be like a lighter. When trying to ignite the flame, the lighter sparks, there’s some brightness and energy. Unfortunately, sometimes that spark never gives way to flame. The spark is exciting and it’s visible. Unless it lights a flame and gives birth to something that endures, though, it’s practically useless.
I told our students that I didn’t want them to have a lighter faith. I saw their lives spark this week and it’s my deepest prayer that those sparks would give way to flame. That their love for Christ wouldn’t only be seen in the sparks, but that it would be seen in a continually burning flame.
I just don’t want that for our students, I want it for myself. I don’t want to just shoot off sparks; I want to be a flame burning brightly for Christ. We need to examine our lives to see if there’s anything impeding our flame. There will obviously be times where our flame burns brighter than others but, apart from that, I don’t want my own sin and my own choices snuffing out that flame.
The best way to ensure our flame burns its brightest is by drawing near to the one for whom it’s burning. God gives life to our flame and he is the one we should pursue to see our sparks turn into something more. We shouldn’t strive for a lighter faith which sparks and then dies out. God wants so much more for us, which is best summed up with a lyric from The Bangles.
“Is this burning an eternal flame?”
How do you stoke the fires of your faith?
What do you do when you lose your faith? How do you get it back? That’s what I have been asking myself.
Joel,
There’s a natural ebb and flow to our lives with God. Sometimes we feel nearer to God and sometimes we don’t. I think that’s natural but it;s good to recognize when we’re starting to grow distant and take steps to draw nearer to God. When that happens we just need to do the things that draw us nearer to God, whether that’s reading the Bible, praying, taking a hike, listening to worship music or talking about Jesus with friends. In the end, our lives with God are simply about spending time with God, sitting before his throne and being in relationship with him.
I’d say that if you were still bothered about losing your faith and want to get it back then you haven’t lost it. You are just going through an emotional rough patch.
Often people do not stoke a fire unless it is dwindling a little bit, so I will respond accordingly.
For me when I am feeling distant from God it is incredibly difficult for me to do something in my own power to stoke the fires of my faith. When this is taking place I feel somewhat numb, and anything to do to be closer to God seems harder than it really is.
I often find the fires of my faith being stoked from being reminded how good God is in the lives of myself and those I love. Lately I feel like this has been especially happening with myself however, because I get a firsthand understanding of being very broken…but blessed despite the fact.
All-in-all…realizations/reminders grained through events in my life, close relationships, and introspections really help stoke the fires of my faith.