SCRIPTURE: Romans 12:11
(CEB)
Don't hesitate to
be enthusiastic—be on fire in the Spirit as you serve the Lord!
STORY:
When he was pastor for the Methodist church in Scarborough,
William Sangster had an eccentric member who tried to be a zealous Christian.
Unfortunately, the man was mentally deficient and usually did the wrong thing.
While working as a barber the man lathered up a customer for a shave, came at
him with the poised razor, and asked, "Are you prepared to meet your
God?" The frightened man fled with the lather on his face!
OBSERVATION:
It’s baseball season and we cheer our favorite team(s) on
with much enthusiasm. The NBA have started there playoff games to determine
which two will meet each other in the championship … and we will zealously cheer
for one. Go Heat! In the fall college football will once again dominate the
airwaves and we will devote hours of cheering on our favorite, wear their
colors, fly the flag of our team from our car window, pledge our loyalty loudly
on Facebook and do all sorts of things that will not cause us to think
otherwise because there is a certain zealousness when it comes to college
football. Go Gators!
Why doesn’t this zealousness translate over into our faith? “Be
on fire in the Spirit as (we) serve the Lord!” Oh, if that was true what a
change we could bring to our communities and our world.
We’ll get hoarse cheering a touchdown, a homerun, a
slam-dunk, but our voices barely can be heard when singing praises to the Lord.
Why is that? Why don’t we bring the same enthusiasm to serving the very thing
that truly matters in life … the King and his Kingdom?
I don’t have the answer, just the question. I wish I knew
the answer, but the scripture does convict me to be more zealous for the Lord!
I keep coming back to the much quoted statement by John Wesley: “The Lord set me on fire and people come
from all over England to watch me burn.”
I really wish that could be said of me. How about you? What would it
take to make that idea a reality in our life? To be so on fire for the Lord
that it would draw people to us.
PRAYER:
Set us on fire Lord, set us on fire!
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