Walking With Christ

Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.(ESV)

Most of my Christian life has included encouragement to be “on fire for the Lord”. We, Christians, are the light of the world and we are meant to burn bright. Unfortunately, when I look around, or even in the mirror some days, what I see are burned out lights. The slide may be slow and the light slowly fades or the flames may get doused by a flood of fear or doubt.

I’ve long wondered what it means to be on fire, how to light that fire, and how to stay on fire. A paster I’ve been following gave me the obvious connection that I’ve been missing. Thanks, Kelly K.

To understand what it is to be on fire for the Lord, we can use what firemen call the fire triangle. There are three main thing required for a fire to burn. For a fire to start we need heat, fuel, and oxygen. If we remove any one of these things from a fire, no matter how big the fire is, that fire will go out.

How does this compare to a Christian who is on fire for the Lord?

1. Heat – God is the source of ignition. Without a relationship with God, the creator of the universe, there is no heat. Hebrews 12:29 for our God is a consuming fire. He IS the heat source.
2. Fuel – This is the believe when soaked in the word, the church, or worship of Christ. Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Without real fuel, the fire will burn out pretty quick. Put 10 cents of fuel in your car and see how far you get. The same thing happens with never doing more than reading the daily verse on YouVersion.
3. Oxygen – This is faith and obedience. Heat can only ignite the fuel in the presence of oxygen. High heat can cause the fuel to chemically break down but there will be no fire without oxygen.

Kelly compares oxygen to testimony and witness saying that a fire that isn’t producing will burn out. I prefer to use faith and obedience because it actually lines up with the scientific nature of fire. The heat (God) uses the fuel (the word) and oxygen (faith) to start a fire. Testimony is the output of the fire. The bigger the fire, the more output (testimony) there will be. You can guess at the nature of the Christian relationship based on the fruit. The fruit of the fire above would be testimony.