Burning for Jesus.

Burning for Jesus. One of the arguments for participating in Christian fellowship is the analogy of logs burning on a fire. If the logs are close together they will help each other burn hotter. If you separate the logs they tend to go out. The problem is that if most of the logs are wet and not on fire they will tend to suffocate the log that is on fire, and the burning log would burn better without the other logs. We need to understand that we are not neutral in this. Either we do our part to let people know that this is a place where we practice our spirituality, or we let them know that it is not permitted, that this place is a mere social club. We WILL have an influence one way or another. I have some practical (I hope) suggestions for how to do this, but we need to think about the problem a little more.

Confessing Jesus as Lord. Every time we let people know that Jesus is Lord of our life we get blessed. God loves it when we declare that we belong to Him and He blesses us for it. One of the easiest places to do this should be among our fellow believers, but there is a problem. We are supposed to be modest. Two Bible passages immediately come to mind that on this subject.

Why NOT confess Jesus as Lord? The first passage starts with: Mat 6:1 "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” When I think of starting a spiritual conversation one thing that the enemy tells me is that I will lose my rewards if I try to make myself look good. A good response to this is that I care more about my friends rewards than my own rewards. I determine in my heart that if I am going to lose a reward because I am doing right, then so be it. It is ridiculous to think that God will take away rewards because we do right. But I will determine to help my brothers and sisters in Christ even if that means me losing out on a reward. Am I going to lose out on social rewards because I act spiritual? Are you going to be a TRUE friend or are you really only there to get what you can for yourself? (and the heck with your “friends” which in this case should be called acquaintances rather than friends.) If I confess Jesus as my Lord, it helps give my FRIENDS the freedom to do the same.

The second passage is Proverbs Pro 16:5: “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD; Assuredly, he will not be unpunished.” We need to determine in our hearts that it is does not make us proud in heart to confess that Jesus is our Lord. It will not damage other people to turn up the spiritual temperature, but rather it will help them.

How can we be a part of turning up the spiritual temperature rather than lower it? How can we confess Jesus as our Lord? In a social setting in which spiritual matters will generally not be talked about (conversation at church for example) we need to have a strategy for making it happen. I can think of several things that we can do in church to confess that Jesus is our Lord and turn up the spiritual temperature.
     Pray. We can ask people to pray with us and we can actually pray rather than tell them we will in the future (which is a lie if we will not actually do it.) We can determine in advance what prayer requests we can make in our conversation.
     Ask Questions. We can ask people things like, “How is your prayer time going?” “How is it between you and God these days?” “Have you been studying your Bible on a regular basis?” Most of us are not going to be comfortable asking these questions, but we need to ask ourselves why not. I say that the Christian culture does not permit it because it is really about loving God only in theory and not in practice, and that is why I am not there. If you don't believe me than you should feel comfortable actually doing it, right? Perhaps you argue that this stuff is private? Why is it private? Because people have a right to live a fake Christian life if they feel like it? It is not being a true friend to let your friend live as a fake. Ask the questions. Determine in advance to ask tough questions.
     Sing. Two verses come to mind about this. “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.“ Col 3:16. I do not think that this is talking about a predetermined song service. I think that we should be doing this in social situations. It fits better with what the verse is talking about. A similar verse is: “And do not get drunk with wine . . . but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord” (Eph 5:18-19). I am not a musician, and have a horrible time memorizing songs. I need to get a lot better at working hard to memorize songs so that I can at least speak the words of songs. People who are musical need to realize that formal song services are not the only place to use their gifts. One can sing softer, to just people in the conversational group, no?
     Testimony. We can decide in advance to tell about a particular incident in which God talked to us, helped us, protected us or in some other way blessed us. We don't have to wait for a formal invitation to use it, we can just insert into a conversation.
     Talk Bible. The Bible is our owner's manual for living life. We need to be wrestling continually with tweaking our life according to the Bible. As we wrestle it helps to get the other person's insight into what the Bible says about it. Sure, there are things we are wrestling with that we should only talk to with very close friends, but there are also many topics not nearly so private we can talk Bible about. We can, for example ask does anyone have any insight into applying a particular Bible verse. We can say how we got blessed applying a particular Bible verse, etc. How about asking if anyone has any ideas on doing the great commission during coffee break or how can you get involved in the stuff that separate the sheep from the goats? (Matthew 25:32+. This is a verse that actually should be used to ask ourselves if we are really following Jesus; if I am not participating in these things I am not. Very scary.) We need to prepare ahead of social situations to turn up the heat in social situations and we need concrete plans on how to do it. 


I personally don't believe that Christianity is about truly loving God and following Jesus. People leave church regularly with unmet needs that could have been easily met if following Jesus was permitted. Christian churches are social clubs. If you believe Christianity is about loving Jesus, then I challenge you to put action to your theory and live it out. I do a lousy job at putting into practice the suggestions that I have just made. One of the reasons I am so bad at it is that I have almost never seen it modeled. I have pretty much never seen this stuff done. This is not what Christianity is about. Christianity is a social club.

One goes to church partly to escape from the cold uncaring world. Leave the stresses of the world behind and relax among family. As far as confessing Jesus as Lord, however, this is stressful, even in church. But think about what we really want here. There is a major difference between being “friendly” and being an actual friend. Being friendly means using proper manners, saying the right thing and using the correct tone of voice. It also means not intruding on peoples personal space, either physically or conversationally.

Church people are usually very friendly. And to be honest, friendly meets emotional needs. There are also aspects to it that are important.  Think about the fruits of the spirit,  "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law" (Gal 5:22-23).  Also, "But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits . . . And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace" (Jas 3:17-18).  Then there is the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13.  There is an appropriate way to behave.

The problem with “friendly” however is that people (not just the other guy but us as well) leave church with very important needs not met. Every one of us needs to leave church more motivated to run the race that God has set before us. Many times that means we need help dealing with issues in our lives. To do that we need an environment where it is OK to talk about spiritual stuff. We need an environment where it is OK to be true friends. It is more important to be a friend than run the risk of letting people leave with unmet needs you could have helped them with. To be a true friend you have to increase the stress level temporarily.


The Bible verse quoted mostly to tell people to go to church is “don't forsake assembling together.” But look at the verse in context. “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (Heb 10:24-26). Regardless of how you interpret the end of that passage, it tells us that it is very important to encourage each other to really, truly live out our faith. In fact, if we go to church and do not encourage someone else to get with the program and do not leave having been encouraged to to do the same, we have not done what the verse talks about, and we have misapplied the verse.

If you think you are about following Jesus I challenge you: decide to turn up the spiritual temperature, decide in advance some strategies you will use when you get to that Christian social setting, and develop some kind of accountability system to actually make sure you do it.