Many of you know the experience of stoking a fire.
Stoke: to poke, stir up, and feed (www.dictionary.reference.com)
E.g. I remember my youthful years when cutting logs with dad for a new house. When the morning cut was over and we sat for lunch around our open fire it would become embers in minutes so that it nearly died and we would become chilled. The flame and warmth of the fire was maintained by stoking the fire, adding more wood and keeping it alive.
Different types of wood achieve diverse results.
• Birch Bark - great for starting fires. Soon dies out, almost as quickly as it started.
• Kindling – starts slow; some smoke; once it catches it creates a good blaze! But it doesn’t last very long. Longer than birch bark, just a slower start and longer finish.
• Cedar (softwood) - burns great, bright instant flame, good heat but for a short duration. It has a great smell to it and the fragrance just permeates the room – my Bermuda experience of burning cedar in the fireplace.
• Maple (hardwood) - burns great. Excellent heat. Beautiful flame. Burns for a long duration. Steady heat for a long time.
• Our fellowship must always desire and aim passion to experience God at work in our lives which reflects himself as beautiful, consistent, dependable, steady, enduring, warming! What is the “maple” equivalent that will fan the presence and influence of God? We look to Acts 2:42 for the answers. We must stoke the fire of God through:
1. Bible study
Acts 2:42a
• “Devoted themselves” literally means constantly desired more and more of the apostles’ teaching. It has been suggested that this picture is one that means “they knew Jesus better than anyone else.” (The Speaker’s Bible). Their study was not based on doctrine and theology, but experience – they had experienced God through Jesus Christ. They had proven him to be who he claimed to be – the Son of the living God. They had tested their doctrine and beliefs against this man’s claim and found him to be God!
• When we experience God’s touch in our lives we want more of him! You cannot be touched by the finger of God and say “that was good but I don’t want any more.” You crave more and an evidence of knowing you have been touched by God is reaching for more of him through the study of the Scriptures.
Bible study is a critical building block to our continuing faith journey. Such was its place and priority in the early church that Paul charged the young pastor Timothy, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
(NLT): “Work hard so God can approve you. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)
The hard work that we are challenged to do is the hard work of living the truth and presenting that truth without compromise. To do that of course we must know the truth, both through our experience of God personally and our knowledge of the Scriptures as the inspired written word of God to the world.
I feel compelled to suggest that one reason many have no desire to study the Scriptures is because their life has not had a strong experience of God personally and relationally. If one has not experienced the truth of God personally, Bible study is nothing more than an academic activity, thus the reason why many are not interested.
In an effort to stoke passion for God to be at work in our lives in our Family this coming season, we will aim to have everyone in a cell group. It is Biblical and if Biblical then necessary.
• Gift of teaching? – need to speaking to us about this important ministry. Don’t worry if you don’t have this gift. We all have the gift to learn!
If we will desire and aim for the passion of God at work in our lives which reflects him through us, we must stoke the fire of God through:
2. Fellowship
Acts 2:42b
• More than singing the same song during Sunday morning worship time.
Trekkie fans – familiar with Tuvok and his Vulcan mind meld. By placing his fingers strategically on another’s face their thoughts become his thoughts and the Vulcan would say, “Our minds are one.”
This is the picture language of Fellowship in this text. They were a living, breathing organism that pulsated with one singular focus and purpose as they fed off each other. It is to know the apostle’s words of 1 Corinthians 12:26 where, using the human body as an example of how the church should relate to its members, “If one part suffers all the parts suffer with it.”
This singular focus is evidenced in every gathering, every corporate experience, every dream, and every desire. He or she who is not experiencing that singular focus may questionably not be a member of the Body of Christ.
Os Guinness (author, lecturer): “The call of Jesus is inescapably a corporate calling…Each of us is summoned individually and therefore uniquely and personally. But we are not summoned to be a bunch of individual believers, rather to be a community of faith.”
Dr. Todd Charles Wood offers the following insight of the character of God and his chart for us. “One attribute of God is His desire for fellowship and community with His people (Psalm 46:10; John 3:16; Revelation 21:3-4). God’s people are encouraged to show this desire. Both the Old and the New Testaments contain passages that promote friendship, fellowship, and community among believers (Exodus 12:19, 47; Proverbs 17:17; 27:6, 10, 17; Ecclesiastes 4:12; Hebrews 10:25; Galatians 6:2; Matthew 18:15-17; Acts 4:31-32). The apostle Paul goes so far as to claim that our commitment to others should mimic that of Christ’s, who laid down His life for us (Philippians 2).” http://www.icr.org/article/127/
In an effort to stoke the fire of the Holy Spirit in our Family this coming season, we will aim to create forums that encourage community and fellowship. Your effort to stoke the presence of God to work in your life is to embrace opportunities to be together, as visitations of God through our efforts to “mimic Christ” by showing interest in one another and having the same bond, the same purpose, the same focus – which is introducing other people to our God!
There must be Bible study. There must be fellowship, if God is to be alive and fulfilling in our experience of him. There is a third way we ar to stoke the presence of God alive within us which awakens our passion for him. It is:
3. Breaking of Bread
Acts 2:42c
One source suggests that this part of the text creates a challenge. “The problem here is whether Luke refers to the ordinary meal as in Luke 24:35 or to the Lord’s Supper. The same verb klaw is used of breaking bread at the ordinary meal (Luke 24:30) or the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:19). It is generally supposed that the early disciples attached so much significance to the breaking of bread at the ordinary meals, more than our saying grace, that they followed the meal with the Lord’s Supper at first, a combination called agapai or love-feasts.” (Robertson, A.T. "Commentary on Acts 2:42") http://www.searchgodsword.org/com/rwp/view.cgi?book=ac&chapter=2&verse=42
We joke in the Army that whenever we get together there’s always food! That’s often very true – not always – but often! And yet, while we kid each other about it, there is something absolutely exciting and powerful about it! The desire to eat whenever we get together becomes a love-feast. How many times do you sit to eat with people you don’t like? If you say ‘often’ you’re in real trouble!
You have heard me pray many times during our monthly Sunday luncheons, “As we break bread, may we be mindful of Christ who was broken on the tree for us.” While we are not sacramental in our tradition or current expression, we have many opportunities of turning ordinary meals into an agapai or love-feast expression and experience.
While some hold that the sacrament is not a sign or symbol but actually performs what it signifies, at the very least our love-feasts can be a visible symbol of an inward grace or work of God that brings us together as community. When you decide to stay for potluck, it’s much more than just deciding you want to eat at the church.
In an effort to stoke the fire of the Holy Spirit in our Family this coming season, we will aim to create forums that encourage breaking bread together. We will try to remind one another that we’re not simply eating food. We are building community and being given another opportunity to enter into love-feast relationships.
There is one final thing in our text that is critical for us to experience God so that he awakens passion in our hearts. It is stoking the presence of God through:
4. Prayer
Acts 2:42d
The most striking thing about prayer is the Biblical lessons of its place publicly as well as privately.
Andrew Murray wrote in his classic, “The Believer’s Prayer Life”: “A man may have life, and still through lack of nourishment or through illness, there may be no abundance of life or power.” Surely it is what Jesus meant when he said in John 10:10, “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” (NLT)
There are those of you who would quickly make a case for your prayer habits. If we sat together to talk about it, you would be able to tell me that you pray very often. You could easily outline your practices of prayer with journaling and a system of covering certain topics or books of the Bible. Yet, many of you would also talk about how prayer doesn’t seem to work. You’ve asked God for things, asked him to perform certain requests, or talked with him about other needs or concerns that are important to you but it seems God never moves toward you in anything you ask.
Prayer often doesn’t work for us because of the way we use it. Prayer is not meant to feed our egos or fill our wish list. God is not a sugar-daddy or cosmic godfather. “Sugar Daddy was a successful hit single for Motown quintet The Jackson 5 in late 1971. The song’s subject matter involves a young man whose girlfriend is using him for material purposes only, while she gives her love to another man.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Daddy) All to often, we use God for our own advantage, to get what we want. That’s not real prayer. Prayer’s purpose is an opportunity to seek to know the mind of God for the world and the way I am to live out this day. While we should share our deepest longings and desires, it is always with a realization that God is not about to always grant what we ask if it’s not the best thing.
Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913), Methodist minister and devotional writer spoke of a reality we face in the 21st century. “We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel…The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men [and women]…What the Church needs today…is [people] of prayer.”
In an effort to stoke the fire of the Holy Spirit in our Family this coming season, we will aim to create forums for community prayer. We cannot draw people to God through better methods or more technology though these have a place to help us present the message in a fresh context. The one thing we must do before all others is be a people given to prayer.
Further note on these four pillars of the church:
Our world, especially the younger generations, have a philosophy that their religious or experience with God is something that is a private matter which is withdrawn from public view and observation. I suggest to you that Biblically based understanding of the church suggests that is not how it can be or how God designed the church to be. He designed her to be in community and holding one another responsible for any slip of faith or un-Christ like demeanor, attitude of heart or wrongful motivation of spirit.
Wrap
This is a time to seek to know God in your life and at work in your world. It is a time to have your passion for God awakened. If you have been there and want to keep that fire burning, you must stoke that fire of God’s presence through Bible study, Fellowship, Breaking of Bread, and Prayer.
