Stoke – [verb] – To add coal or other solid fuel to a fire. To encourage or incite a strong emotion or tendency.
Currently I am in Bokspits, Botswana. A tiny town that’s on the border with South Africa. Bokspits is a part of the Kalahari desert. Other than being absolutely gorgeous landscape, the Kalahari is quite frigid this time of year. A few nights recently it got down to -1 Celsius.
That’s pretty cold.
For hopefully obvious reasons we’ve been making fires a decent bit lately. One night I was outside by myself toying with the coals that were still glowing. The remnants of a dying fire. As I was poking them and blowing on them they would suddenly come back to life. Burning with gusto, unwilling to die so easily.
But as time went on, it seemed the coals started to die again. On their own they didn’t amount to much. I mean heck, if it wasn’t for us who started the fire they’d still just be wood.
For whatever reason over the past couple months I have been thinking about and using a great deal of fire imagery. I mean, my last two team names have been Catching Fire and Wildfire.
Over that time I’ve come to realize just how fragile fire really is. Sure, it’s this great force of nature. Burning, changing, cleansing, moving at its own terrifying pace. But think about what happens if water is thrown on it. Dirt. If it runs out of fuel. Fire doesn’t seem so scary any more.
I think the Christian faith is like fire.
And not just in the cheesy ways either.
Read your Bible and pray and you’ll always have fuel for your Christian “fire” to burn!
… I mean that’s pretty cheesy.
But true.
We need to constantly be stoking our fire. Poking and prodding it. Adding fuel to it. Setting it up for the success. Giving it everything it needs to burn as bright and hot as possible.
Why burn? Because fire is a game changer. Some places don’t go back to normal after fire. It alters the landscape. Changes it. Purifies it. Sounds kinda cool right?
I think that’s what our faith should look like. Shooting forward. Changing the world. Spreading all over the place. Igniting others passions. Burning away the issues and problems we face. Turning our hurts and pain to mere ash. Growing brighter and brighter. Stronger and stronger.
You can find no shortage of worship songs that say this. Songs you probably sang recently. Being “on fire” for God. I think there’s something to that.
Of course no amount of stoking, prodding, poking, or building can change the fact that you have to get that spark to start the fire. Someone to tend to it. Direct it. Build it the appropriate way. Fix it when it falls. Reignite it when it starts to die.
You can’t simply stoke your own fire. You can certainly set yourself up for success. But it won’t matter unless you let God take care of you. Direct you. Build your fire. Set up the tender, and then light it. Breathe life into it when the coals grow dim. Add more wood when you’ve almost burnt down to nothing.
He doesn’t mind doing it. Pretty sure He actually enjoys it.
We often try and build our own fires. And just end up shooting ourselves in the foot. Using wet wood. Weird and useless techniques. Too much fuel. Not enough fuel. Choke it so much it doesn’t get enough oxygen. The list goes on and on.
We’re pretty terrible at it I think. But that won’t stop us from thinking we’re amazing and trying anyway. Pride seems to get us into trouble a good bit.
We have to let God make and tend to our fire. We have to let Him run our lives. We have to let Him stoke our fire. Let Him make it rage and grow so that we can do whatever He wants of us.
We have to let God make us burn.
Stoke your fires right along side God, people. Who knows what will happen.
Seth
