On Fire

Those aren't my words, but a song I heard today. The song talks about how once you had a fire for the Lord and weren't afraid to tell anyone. Now the fire has gone out, but the Lord wants to start it again. That's a quick summary.

As I listened to the song, I couldn't help but look back at my time as a Christian. I've seen two ways people come out of baptism or accepting Christ. They either don't know what to do (which are usually kids) and people who are on fire (those are usually the adults).

I believe an acceptance and baptism as an adult comes with a greater understanding and capacity to know the depth of change this will create in life. That is because rarely does an adult come to know Christ by accident not by boredom. Nobody ever says, hey my life is going so good I think I'll add a little Jesus. Most come to Christ understanding they are broken and their lives are messy.

Learning that kind of hope in the midst of mess leads most people to have a fire in them. They have found this thing that infuses their life with light in a dark world. Most people want others to know that kind of hope and love because you begin to see just how broken the world is.

I had that once. I wanted to shout it everywhere. I joined the witnessing team. I stood amongst gangsters and at bus stops with homeless people, sharing the hope they could have in Jesus. I replaced filthy cartoons on my desk with crosses and scripture. I did the same in my home with random pictures. If the church doors were open, I was there. I stood up to anyone who told me I was wrong.

But my fire fizzled.

Why?

The church.

Ok, so not the church as much as my spoiled idea of what Christians were like. Maybe more accurately, it was a sullied idea of how Christians would treat me.

When I went with the witnessing team, I was constantly told I was doing it wrong. I was told I needed to tell people they were sinners and going to hell. I couldn't do it. If someone had presented the gospel to me in that way, I'd have run the other way. It was so offensive. Not that the bible isn't to sinners and those apart from God. It is. But I needed to be able to present a more passionate God, the one I knew, before telling someone they'd surely go to hell without an immediate conversion.

After silently handing out tracts that were tossed on the ground two feet behind my back, I knew this wasn't the place for me.

One day at work, I had an employee sit in my office and tell me that she no longer wanted to hear my music and found my crosses to be offensive. I'd have been able to take that but she was screaming and about a foot from my face when she went into full attack mode. Having just given up my family for Christ, this felt like a brutal attack on an open wound.

I was at the church when the doors were open, but I constantly questioned why. The information was so foreign to me. My first bible study was Beth Moore's Daniel. It was tough for mature Christians. I was lost. The first time I tried to eat dinner with other ladies, they weren't nice at all. Another lady told an entire group of women that of girls wear short skirts they deserved to be raped. Touchy subject for certain.

I often sat in a corner alone because nobody talked to me. When I finally started making friends, I bounced from one disaster to another. Seriously. You'd not even believe me if I told you cause they were that jacked up.

While the fire was fizzling, our pastor left and thus began the ordeal with leadership and next pastor. It was a crazy time. It was also a crazy time in my personal life.

The fire started to come back as a renewal of my relationship with Christ began early last year. Things were great and I didn't hesitate to tell anyone what God has done in my life. God was the leader of my life and I had a confidence in Him I'd thought was once lost.

Then I went into our church here with that confidence and fire, but it was the wrong setting and timing. I was an outsider and the people are different. Not bad, just different. My confidence was offensive and so was I. My confidence made me more like a bull in a china shop.

So, the fire fizzled again. My bible gets opened on Sunday's when I remember to take it. My study bible gets touched when I dust. I pray, but with a lack of enthusiasm.

Going back to the song. I hope it's true. I hope that God continues to pursue and has a plan to start the fire again.