What was the best gift you ever got as a kid? Mine was definitely the Nintendo 64. I remember opening it up on Christmas morning in 1996 and being overcome with excitement. I immediately took it out of the box and set it up. For the next few months I played it as often as I could, told everyone about it, and thought about it whenever I wasn’t playing it (no time for girlfriends over here!). As time passed though, something changed. It slowly got played less and less until it eventually just sat and collected dust below my television. I went from being totally excited and on fire about it to honestly feeling no strong emotion either way about it.
Speaking of great gifts, in the book of Romans, Paul tells us about an amazing gift that we have all received from God. He says that even though we are all sinners we have been “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). Through this gift we have been given an opportunity to be saved through baptism (1 Pet. 3:21) and are promised an eternity in Heaven. What an awesome God we serve!
Here’s my question: As a Christian, once you received this gift from God in baptism, does your story start to sound a lot like my Nintendo 64 story? Were you totally excited and on fire at first? Were you ready to tell everyone about the great gift you received? Did you think about it all of the time and make it a priority to study God’s word regularly? Fast forward to now, is the fire still burning or has that fire become a few glowing embers? Is your Bible collecting dust somewhere? Are you not really feeling any strong emotion either way? What do your daily actions show?
If you do feel like your fire is starting to go out (or is out already), here are four ways to help get a healthy fire burning again:
1) Pray: Talk to God every day, especially first thing in the morning. It helps you continue to build a relationship with Him and calibrate your mind on what’s truly important.
2) Fellowship: If you spend all of your time with worldly people, how are you going to keep your mind on Godly things? Make an effort to spend time with Christians outside of corporate church settings.
3) Serve: There is nothing that lights a fire more than when you serve others in His name.
4) Reflect: Take some time to reflect on your baptism and how you felt about your Christianity back then. It’s good to remind yourself of all of the reasons why you made that great decision.
Even if your fire has started to go out it’s not too late to get it going again, but first you have to be honest with yourself. Let’s all get our fires burning bright for God once again!
Jeff Wiant