The 2002 Winter Olympics draws to a close today. The Olympic Flame will be extinguished tonight, their theme stamped on the event signs throughout the Olympic venues, “Light the Fire Within”, taken down and put away. I am not ready to pack it away. In fact, as Christians, we ought to continually be lighting the fire within.
Today, God wants to speak to you. There is a stirring within your soul, coming from deep within, a fire that wants to breakout and fan across your world. God has called me to ignite that flame, that fire, to spark something within you today, that something being the power of the Holy Spirit, that will help you to reach out and lay hold of the prize of the victor. Who in the house is ready to be ignited for the cause greater than you, the cause of Christ? The cause of being a difference maker, sharing the love, sharing the acceptance, sharing the forgiveness of Jesus with those in your world?
The prophet Isaiah, For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. (Isaiah 62:1).
Isaiah said he could not keep quiet; there was a fire that burned from within. He was going to keep telling people about God until righteousness shined out, until salvation became a blazing torch in the land.
It has been said “evil triumphs when good people remain silent.” It is time to stir the fire within. We can no longer be silent. We must become agents of change. We must join hands with Isaiah and other men and women of the past, linked by our common bond in God, and in unison say, “It is time for the power and the glory of our God to come and bring His glory known in our day!”
How do we light the fire within? We do it with the flame of…
Passion
People have categorized our time in history has being a time without passion. There wrong. Bombarded by a multi-media experience of life, we are not passionless, we have been overloaded. But the fire within burns for the intimacy of relationship. To light the fire within, we need to have…
A Passion for God.
The Psalmist wrote of passion. Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk and live in Your truth; direct and unite my heart [solely, reverently] to fear and honor Your name I will confess and praise You, O Lord my God, with my whole (united) heart; and I will glorify Your name forevermore. (Psalm 86:11-12).
Just as the Olympic Flame comes from Athens Greece for each Olympics, the source for our fire within comes from God. We must first establish that vertical relationship. We need to cry out to God, teach me how to be more passionate for you by showing me the way you would have we walk through this life on earth. God direct my heart so that I will fear and honor you in all ways, in all things. And when we do, we stoke the flame until it burns within our soul and we cannot remain silent because we are passionate about our commitment.
Not only do we need to have a passion for God, we need to have:
A passion for others.
In Psalm 2:8, God gives us this information. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance. When we have a passion for God, we will have a passion to do the work of God, the work of seeing the world come to Christ. When you and I allow the fire of God to burn within, there comes a passionate heart cry for the lost people, both in our community and around the world. It is when we have the passionate heartbeat of God who sent His Son Jesus to pay the price of salvation for the world. How much less could you or I do in the same pursuit but to help show them the way to Jesus, our redeemer?
We need to have a passion to dream God’s dreams!!!
The truth is the value of our passion, like fire, will be judged finally by the amount of warmth and light it creates. Fanatics like foresting fires, burning bright but destroy all in their path that is tender and green. To be useful, fire must be controlled. To live passionately, we must develop discipline; to love powerfully we must forge bonds of commitment.
Not only do we need to have passion, we need to also have…
Inspiration
We need inspiration. Talk to people who have been successful in life, and you will find someone they can point to as the inspiration for their achievement.
Parade Magazine carried the following story of the surgeon general. Dr. David Satcher came of age in Alabama during the civil-rights movement. As a two-year-old, he contracted whooping cough. His parents were not allowed to use the nearby whites-only hospital so they were frantic. The only black doctor in the area had to travel 20 miles to treat young David. Despite the doctor’s efforts, the boy was expected to die. "But my mother never gave up," he says. She also never stopped telling her son about the wonderful doctor who came to treat him and saved his life. Satcher grew up knowing he wanted to be a family doctor. Now he’s America’s family doctor.
If you need inspiration, read the lives of the great men and women of the faith in Hebrews 11 and then reflect on Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
If you are going to light the fire within, you are not only going to need passion and inspiration, but you will also need
Perspiration
We can talk about lighting the fire within but without evidence, how do we know the fire is burning? Where is the smoke? Where is the flame? Where is the charred evidence we have passed by? James 2:26 says: As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Randy Marsh said The power of your ambition depends wholly on the vigor of the determination behind it. What you accomplish will depend on the amount of live energy, enthusiasm, and willpower you put into your efforts to achieve.
What are your dreams? What are your ambitions? What are you putting your blood, sweat and tears into? What is the fire that burns within?
We can come up with excuses of why we can’t, sitting back and doing nothing, or we can go for the gold and allow the Holy Spirit to ignite the fire within so we can accomplish great things for him. Consider Olympic athlete Jim Abbott. Born without a right hand, he nevertheless became a Little League and high school baseball star, a college All-American, an Olympic hero, and a major-league standout. Perhaps his crowning moment was pitching a no-hit, no-run game in the 1993 pennant race. His real fans, however, see him as a far more than a pitcher. He is their hero. When Abbott heard about Erin Bower, who at age five lost a hand when a rigged tube of toothpaste exploded, he wrote a personal letter saying, "When the final out was made, a lot of things went through my mind. The only thing, Erin, that I didn’t pay attention to was my handicap. You see, it had nothing to do with anything."
It is time to light the fire within. It is time to be passionate about life, to not only look to others for inspiration, but to be an inspiration to others around us. It is time to perspire, to get into the action and become the difference makers of our generation.
The reward which await is worth the expenditure of our life, of our energy. You might be aware of the account of three servants in Matthew 25: 14 ff. "Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.
To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.
The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more.
But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
"After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.
20 The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. `Master,’ he said, `you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ "His master replied, `Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ "The man with the two talents also came. `Master,’ he said, `you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’ "His master replied, `Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
It goes on so say, the one who had not done anything with the talents, with the fire within, well, he was cast out and lost all. Lets make a decision, a positive decision today.
CLOSE—ALTAR TIME
