December 17th, 2011 Week In Review…

Another week has come and gone.  It was a busy week in real life and here on the Stretched Blog.  The blog is trending towards similar traffic patterns to last week – maybe even stronger this week.  This week saw the second best day ever on The Stretched Blog.  And I’m excited about what’s coming up in the week ahead.  Here’s a recap of the week.

Monday, I kicked off the week with a post which indicated that the Stretched Blog was visiting The Handwritten.  If you haven’t read it yet, please head over to Michael Perkin’s blog to read my guest post titled Stop & Start.  On Tuesday, I shared about my surprise party and I threw out a question about the cake.  We learned some interesting things about some of those in The Stretched Community.  Wednesday, The Stretched Blog paid a visit to Deuceology for a guest post titled I’m Dreaming Of A Stretched Christmas.  Larry “The Deuce” Carter mentioned that the post has been running strong over on his blog.  Please head over and check it out, and read the other stuff that Larry’s writing about.  My Thursday post was an introspective post about what it means and looks like to be on fire with our faith.  I’m still wrestling through this one, and I appreciated the comments that contributed to the conversation and my thought process.  And finally on Friday, we finished the week off with another fun holiday Ice Breaker where we learned about what gift everyone would like to receive on the 13th day of Christmas.  You should check it out if you’re trying to figure out what to get The Stretched Blogger for Christmas!

I am so thankful for your contribution to the blog through comments.  Your comments are what makes this Stretched Community!  Please remember to take the time to Subscribe to the blog, so you can have Stretched delivered daily to your e-mail inbox.  Also, don’t forget to stop by the Jon Stolpe Stretched Facebook fan page.  Become a fan to keep up with some additional Stretched stuff.  Thanks!

A few of my favorite posts from the rest of the blogging community this week:

• Even Nice Labels Lie by Tony J. Alicea on The People of the Second Chance
• When You Need Help Writing Do This… by Jeff Goins on Jeff Goins Writer
• How to Lead Yourself Everyday! by Dave Ferguson

How about you?  How was your week?  If you’re a blogger what happened over your way this week?  Did you read any great blog posts this week?  Share with the rest of us!

On Fire

Last night, I was challenged with a question about my faith.  The question went something like this:  What does it take to live our lives fully on fire for God?  What does that look like?  I’m not 100% on where the question was coming from, but it left me to ponder my own walk and my typical desire to find a formula for everything.  After all, I’m an engineer!

When I briefly searched the Bible this morning, I could find very few references to our passion for following God and the term fire.  Most of the fire references talk about God’s wrath towards people who stray from Him.  There are also a few references proclaiming that God is a consuming fire.

So maybe the question should have been “What does it look like when we are living our lives fully passionate for God?”  Or simply, “What does it really look like to be a fully devoted follower of Christ?”

I can name a few things that seem to make sense like reading the Bible, serving others, going to church, tithing, and sharing my faith, but it seems like I’m trying to follow a formula.

I shared with my friends that I don’t feel like the intensity of my fire for God is constant.  There are times when it burns brightly and more intense, and there are times when it appears to be a small candle.  I feel like life circumstances can sometimes diminish our flames as we struggle to find hope for the day ahead.  On the other hand, there are clearly times when I feel a burning passion and connection with God.

What this leads me to believe is that our faith cannot simply be about our feelings.  Our feelings and passions will go up and down.  We’re like that.  We need to be doing the necessary things to feed our minds, so that when our feelings leave us in the dumps we will still know that God is God.

And so, I’m still pondering these questions from last night.  Thank you for letting me wrestle and stretch out loud.

What do you think?  What do you do with these questions?