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?