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We hope it informs, encourages, and inspires you to live a life on fire. To learn more about this blog and Ignite Letting Christ Ignite the Fire in Me
Luke 3:15-17 (The Message)
15The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”
16-17But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
One aspect of raising our spiritual temperature is to allow God to sort the valuable from the rubble in our lives. In this passage, John explains that Christ will do that.
There are so many things that compete for our attention and energy each day. How do we sort them and know that we are focusing our energy, time and resources on things that will matter?
How I struggle some days to do that on my own. For so many reasons I cling to the things in life that have no eternal value. I need to go into each day asking Christ to help me to look at my life, sort through and get rid of the things that are just taking up space so that I can focus on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy as we are challenged in Philippians 4:8.
The challenge we have before us with Ignite will call for very clear, focused attention on things of Kingdom-building value. My prayer is that we each can go into each day asking Christ to make clear to us what is of most value and help us to tackle those tasks with unmatched determination.
~ Deana Kistner
August 24th, 2007 at 8:47 am
>One aspect of raising our spiritual temperature is to allow God to sort the valuable from the rubble in our lives… For so many reasons I cling to the things in life that have no eternal value
This is so true. One of the things I noticed in my life is that in the past often when I sensed God leading me to start doing something new like consistantly beginning each day with scripture and prayer or getting into a small group or serving in some way, I had a tendancy to try to ADD that new thng to all the other things I was already doing. Somehow I thought I could squeeze one more thing into my day even though my day wasn’t getting longer. As a result, I usually was inconsistant, got frustrated, and failed.
At some point I realized that the only way I could successfully START doing something new with God is if at the same time I STOP doing something else less important.
August 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I was very intrigued by this devotional topic. Upon reading I began realizing how more I could be praying than I have been. I’ve noticed that since being so busy everyday i’ve gone from “I’m gonna stop what i’m doing and pray about that” to “I need to pray about that later” and forget to. I’ve been being so involved in the non-eternal things through out the day and slacking in that which is most important - praying!
August 25th, 2007 at 10:06 am
I like the idea of the “Stop List.” I think God may be prompting me and maybe you, too. Let’s let God doing some sorting and help us STOP so that we can START being more of who and what He wants us to be.
Here’s the start of my Stop List
1. Stop watching so much TV
2. Stop being selfish
I might have to just work on these 2 for awhile and let my success build before I get overwhelmed and find I have STOPPED trying!