Flame
"The LORD, the Light of Israel, will be a fire; the Holy One will be a flame. He will devour the thorns and briers with fire, burning up the enemy in a single night." (Isaiah 10:17 NLT)
One of my favorite features of the house my husband and I bought almost 20 years ago is that it came with a fireplace. And the fireplace came with a fireplace tool set. And the tool set came with a bellows...the wood-and-leather contraption used to feed oxygen to a fire.
I'm always amazed at how a little air can ignite a fire that's dying out. Of course, God the Flame never dies out, but I know I need to be constantly fanning the flame of faith in myself. As usual, my first stumbling block in doing this is remembering to do it, and the second one is being able to mentally access tools (like those bellows) to do it. So once more, I'm calling a mnemonic acrostic into action. (I do try not to bombard you with these every day, but I couldn't resist here. Of course, I didn't try very hard. Thanks for your grace, friends.)
F = Fellowship. As an introvert, this is a hard one for me, but I know that when I spend time with people who are on fire for God, my own flame gets ignited.
L = Love. (The action.) Faith on the inside often looks like love on the outside. What can I do today to show love to my people in a way that looks like love to them?
A = Ask. God is big on saying "yes" when we ask Him for things He's in favor of. His affirmative answer may not always be in the form or timing we have in mind, but when we ask for something He's already made clear He wants us to have—like hot faith—His "yes" is a pretty sure thing.
M = Move. I've worked on enough wood fires to know that moving the logs around usually gets the thing going again. When my flame of faith is dying out, maybe that's the time for me to move some things around: my schedule, my habits, my thoughts, my choices.
E = Expect. If I'm asking God to fan faith's flame in my mind and heart, I need to do it with a mental posture of expectation and be looking for those flames to leap up.
Author Madeleine L'Engle wrote, "We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."
Oh God, You are the eternal Flame. Fan the flame of You in me so that I might be for you a light so lovely that others are drawn to You, the loveliest Light of all.
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I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to tell me what you really think. Years ago, I explained to my then-two-year-old that my appointment with a counselor was "sort of like going to a doctor who will help me be a better mommy." Without blinking, she replied, "You'd better go every day." All of which is just to say I've spent some time in the school of brutal honesty!