A few years ago, I was asked to speak at the Christian Church in the
Southwest Regional Men’s Retrat. The
theme was, Ignite a Fire in Me.
It made me think of all the wonderful fire images in scripture—the
fire where Jacob cooked the beans that finagled Esau out of his birthright, the
fire of that surrounded the Bush but did not consume it, the fire by night that
led the Israelites out of Egypt and to the Promised Land, the fire Elijah
called down from heaven to consume his altar when squared off with the prophets
of Baal, the coal taken from the altar touched to Isaiah’s lips by the
Angel, the tongues of flame at Pentecost
. . . But, what I really thought about
was camping.
I’m an Eagle Scout—big part of scouting is camping, big part of
camping is managing a fire. You come in
as a Tenderfoot scout—11 or 12 years of age.
And like every 11/12 year old you’re a pyromaniac. You figure out that if you want to set
something on fire, it’s pretty easy to do.
But, it’s happen to more than one of us that we got so busy lighting
matches we’d get down to the last one or two matches and not have any fire
built. That’s when you realize that if
you screw up again, you’ll be eating raw food.
And the one thing an 11 or 12 year old likes more than playing with fire
is eating.
If you’re lucky, someone will have mercy on you and show you how to
build a fire the right way. They teach
you that when building a fire there’s three things you need to collect—tender,
kindling and fuel. Tender is the stuff
you can light with a match. Dry leaves
or grass, newspaper, if you’re lucky a paper towel that’s been used to sop up
bacon grease, or my favorite out in this part of the state—cedar bark. Kindling is the kind of wood you can light
from tender. But Tender and Kindling
burn up pretty quick. You might be able
to roast a wiener over a kindling only fire but if you want to cook one of them
dutch oven cobblers, you’ll need something else. You have to have fuel. Tender lights kindling, kindling lights fuel,
fuel cooks cobbler. Simple
equation. And over the years, you learn
some nuance. Like you learn that you
have to tend to a fire so it doesn’t burn down acreage your camping on, and you
learn to break up coal so that it burns out quickly because you don’t want to
pour a lot of water on a fire pit if you’re coming back to it the next night to
cook chili or something. You figure out
that fires are hot and the more fuel the hotter. You learn, particularly in summer, how to put
on just enough fuel to cook your food and not cook your face and how to manage
the fire so that it dies down at the right time and how to manage the wood pile
so you don’t spend all your time searching for fuel. But that’s it, tender—kindling—fuel.
So Eagle Scout becomes an adult and becomes a youth minister or youth
sponsor . . . goes to church camp. Eagle
Scout responsible adult interacts with artsy-fartsy, hippie guitar player youth
dude. Artsy-fartsy, hippie guitar player
youth dude says, “We should have a campfire tonight. Do you know how to build a fire?” “Yeah, I know how to build a fire it takes
tender-kindling . . .” “Great, you build
the fire, I’ll bring my guitar will have a great campfire for the kids.” So
Eagle Scout responsible youth person goes about collecting the necessary
wood—tender—kindling--fuel. Knowing
that artsy-fartsy hippie guitar youth
dude will want a campfire every night, you pick up enough fuel to last all
week. Build a few piles. Time comes, you assemble the wood, tender on
bottom, surrounded by kindling, and just enough fuel to last the length of the
campfire so that you don’t cook yourself and you don’t have to spend half the
night waiting for the fire to die down to a safe level. As the kids show up, you strike one
match—light the tender. Tender catches kindling, kindling catches fuel. We’re good to go. And Artsy-fartsy hippie guitar player comes
over to your week’s worth of fuel and puts about half of the wood you collected
on the fire. “What are you doing?” “I can’t read the song sheet. I need more light.” “They make these sticks, you stick in
batteries, little bulb at the end, on off switch.” “Naw, this is better.”
So now you know a few things.
One, you know it’s about to get a lot hotter than you expected. You’re going to start sweating and you’re
going to stink. Two, you know that it’s
going to take twice as long to get the fire to a safe level and that’s going to get you to your bunk a
lot later than you wanted. Three, you’re
going to have to spend a lot more time collecting fuel. And as you’re mulling over these realities,
artsy fartsy hippie guitar playing youth dude begins singing. “It only takes a
spark, to get a fire going.” And that’s
when you practically reach boiling point and you want to say, “No it
doesn’t. It takes tender-kindling-and
fuel.” And that’s what I would say about
evangelism—it takes more than a spark to have a fire worth passing on.
In many ways, the story of American Christian history—particularly
among men—is told as a sequence of sparks.
Jonathon Edward and George Whitefield 1741—Spark, the First Great
Awakening. Cane Ridge, 1801 Barton
Stone—Spark, Second Great Awakening.
Azusa Street, Los Angeles California, 1906, William J. Seymour—Spark,
Global Pentecostal Movement. Billy
Graham Minneapolis, 1950—Spark, the
modern Evangelical movement. Martin
Luther King, march on Washington, DC, 1963—Spark. Dr. Bill Lee, Brownwood, Texas, 2012 CCSW
Men’s Retreat—Spark. And what we forget
to tell is that these sparks landed somewhere there was fuel present for each
of those movements that enabled the fire to grow. What is true of fires is true of spiritual
movements—it takes more than a spark to ignite a fire worth passing on.
In the New Testament letter of 2 Peter, we read these words—“His
divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great
and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine
nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” God’s divine power has given us everything we
need.
From Greek Mythology, we get that story about the creation of
humanity—Epimetheus whose name means afterthought had made the other animals
but he had given all the really good gifts away—swiftness, courage, cunning,
fur, wings. It came time to do the
really important work, and he didn’t have any good gifts left—he thought. He turned to his brother Prometheus—whose
name means forethought—and Prometheus fashioned men to stand upright like the
Gods. And then Prometheus gave them
something far better than wings. He stole
fire from the God’s and gave it to humanity.
And as the story goes “therefrom [fire] learns many crafts.” As the mythology goes, Zeus was angered by
Prometheus’ theft and punishes him—requiring him to guard and push a rock and
have his liver eaten daily by an Eagle.
In the Greek mindset, the gods withheld the good from people because
they didn’t want to have them. The
Christian proclamation is quite different.
It says that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. God doesn’t withhold what is good. God doesn’t chain you to some rock where you
can be punished repeatedly. Jeremiah the
prophet proclaimed the word of God say, “ For surely I know the plans I
have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give
you a future with hope. “ We don’t have
to invent fire, we don’t have to cause force trees to grow.
The image I have is of a good Dad—not like me, you know—but one who
has the patience and knowledge about how to build things that he can take his
son or daughter into the shop, assemble the tools and the materials and show
their children how to build stuff. When
there’s a screw to be screwed in, the Dad will take the child’s hand in his
hand and wrap it around the screw drive and add just enough pressure to the
child’s hand to move the screw into place.
When the project is done, the child will show his or her mother, you
know, and say “I built this. I built this.”
“Really, all by yourself?” “No,
my Daddy helped me.” I think about the
man who taught me how to build a fire. I
really was down to my last match. He had
watched me try to light a log on fire directly from the match. Keith Wells, crusty oilman, World War II
veteran, Marine took my hand and he lifted it up and showed me that the dry
twigs at the end of the branches are the tree were what I needed. In the morning when there’s dew, he said, the
stuff on the ground may be too wet. So
you reach up to the trees where the wood is still dry. If it bends too much, you don’t want it. But keep searching you’ll find the stuff that
snaps off easily. God has provided
everything we need—the wisdom we need for discernment, the strength we need for
endurance, the energy we need for initiative, the concentration we need for
prayer, the memory we need for Christlikeness.
All that we need, God has supplied.
Too many Christians today live with functional atheism. They believe in God, they believe that Jesus
is the Son of God. They believe in duty
and responsibility and obedience. But,
they don’t believe that God ever steps in to help them.
But the text goes on to say, “For this reason, make every effort to
add to your faith goodness; and to goodness knowledge; and to knowledge
self-control; and to self-control perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;
and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness love. For if you you possess these
qualities IN INCREASING MEASURE they will keep you from being
ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is
nearsighted and blind and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past
sins.” (2 Peter 1:5-9. It takes more than a spark to have a fire
worth passing on. It take
tender-kindling-fuel. Add to your faith
. . . if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you
from being ineffective and unproductive.
). Texts like this ring true to
me, if you take the first part by itself—it sounds like it’s all God’s work and
we’ve got nothing to do—Just let go and let God. If you just read this part without the first
part, you think all the work gets done by you—If it’s to be it’s up to me. But what the New Testament affirms repeatedly
is that the Christian life is a partnership between God and believer, between
God and church. God does 100% of the
work through Christians giving 100% of themselves.
I would like to lift up a few pieces of fuel I think men need in their
lives. Women probably need them also
but, I was talking to men so here goes:
Men need an accountability partner.
Accountability partners is another person who know where you are tempted
and tried and has permission to ask about how you're doing in those areas of
your life.
Daily reading of scripture. I
heard once a statemetns, I don't know that I agree with it completely but it's
stuck with me for years. Someone said,
"If I go one day without reading scripture, God knows it. If I go two days without reading scripture, I
know it. If I go three days without
scripture, everyone knows it."
An active, disciplined prayer life.
Every man prays. Go to a
Christian Men's Fellowship work day and you'll hear lots of prayers of petition. At least that's what I think their doing when
they hit a sticky problem. But those
momentary prayers are not nearly as important as disciplined and earnest
prayers that include more than just petition.
They include praise and thanksgiving.
It take more than a spark to get a fire going. It take tender, kindling and most of all it
takes fuel to have a fire worth passing on.
