An Excerpt from The Fuel and the Flame
To order a copy, click here.
Although Katherine came from a fairly moral and religious home, she had secretly decided she was going to become a sorority “party girl” when she hit the college campus. Sure enough, she was able to accomplish that goal and much more as she spent her weekends in drunken stupors and in the beds of accommodating upperclassmen. By Christmas, though, life had become empty and boring and she began searching for more. Soon after, one of her friends invited her to a worship and share time a local church was sponsoring on campus. She had never seen people so real, so vulnerable, and so accepting. That very night she bowed her head to ask the Lord to come in and save her, a sinner.
The change was immediate and everyone saw it. Her vast network of friendships now became opportunities for bold witness. Some turned her off, but many listened and responded to her testimony of a transformed life. Different Christian groups on campus recruited her to give her testimony at their meetings, and the church asked her to be one of the soloists in the choir. Katherine was on a spiritual high when a group of her sorority sisters asked her, a freshman and new Christian, to lead a house Bible study for them. However, trouble was on the horizon for this girl who sprang up quickly, but had no real roots to draw from. In place of laying a deep personal foundation she, instead, became very prideful about the newfound celebrity status she had acquired from the Christians on campus.
A turning point took place one Monday morning in late April. After a glorious night of Bible study and praise the evening before, she woke up and felt nothing─no joy, no sense of God’s presence, no desire to pray or witness. Absolutely nothing. Had she lost her salvation? Had God left her? Was she really a Christian or was this all an act? Thoughts of doubt and betrayal flooded her mind. She didn’t really have a spiritual leader she could go to, and she was embarrassed to admit this to her girlfriends, so she decided to go it alone. One day of no fellowship with the Lord turned into two, three, a week and then two weeks.
No less than three weeks later she snuck out to a party of one of her old boyfriends, looking to find some kind of high to replace the one she had lost that Monday morning. Not only did her testimony fall apart in the ensuing weeks, but her life began to unravel as well. By July she had married one of her old bedmates, moved into a trailer home, denied any Christian commitment she once had, and decided not to return to college. A tragic story of a girl who had incredible potential, but her spiritual life was a mile wide and an inch deep. She knew the right thing to do and had all the right answers, but she lacked any real lasting convictions.
Honesty is Always the Best Policy!
Talk is cheap. I can fool you, and you can fool me. I can tell you that I believe Bible study and prayer are important. I can say, “Amen, brother” when you speak of personal holiness and servanthood. However, the proof of my Christian maturity is whether my beliefs have trickled down from my mind and mouth into my spiritual bloodstream to become a reality in my life. One definition of character is: what we do when no one else is around. The same is true of convictions. What we are in private is...what we are! God has a 24 hour-a-day, seven day-a-week video camera that not only sees our actions, but our motives too. “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13).
Let’s not do a repeat of Adam and Eve, thinking we can somehow cover ourselves and hide from God so He won’t know what we have done or thought. Let’s be honest and admit that we are in desperate need of His grace, His mercy, and His power. The Christian life He has called us to live is not difficult─it’s impossible! Apart from a moment by moment empowering by the Holy Spirit we will live defeated, frustrated lives with little or no fruit. Total dependence on God needs to be stuck in your frontal lobe as you begin to build this foundation that will have to last you clear into eternity.
When designing a building, as in life, you’ll not only need a detailed plan, but also a checklist of quality resources that you will use to create a lasting structure. First, though, search your heart to determine what rocks and roots need to be ripped out before you can sink deep the steel girders and building blocks. Paul referred to himself as a wise master builder and thus exhorted the Corinthians to use the right materials in laying their spiritual foundation. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:11-13: “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire; and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.”
Paul is telling us that the foundation is Christ Himself. We must be careful how we build upon that base, using precious and
enduring materials rather than worthless ones that will quickly perish. Ultimately, we will come before God and be rewarded according to the quality (it doesn’t say quantity) of our building. God’s aim in this passage is to show us the difference between what is eternal and temporal. The building blocks in our foundation must be values and convictions that are from God’s quarry, not man’s.
What are You Exchanging Your Life For?
What are your convictions? The main way to tell what they are is to look at what you’re exchanging your life for right now. Are those things eternal or temporal? For example, whatever you exchange your time and money for is what you value. Let me take a look at your checkbook or your schedule, and I’ll tell you exactly what’s important to you. You might say, “I don’t have a schedule.” No, everyone has a schedule. It may not be a good one, but everybody has one!
Not long ago, my family and I spent almost a year in the country of Ukraine helping develop our campus ministry there and learning more about what is involved in reaching students in other cultures. In each city we visited there were currency exchange booths everywhere─little metal huts with a tiny window and a person peering out. Outside on a sign would be that day’s exchange rate for the U.S. dollar, Russian ruble, and sometimes German mark. With only a handful of Americans in that country, I wondered why there were thousands of these exchange huts─I soon learned why. The Ukrainian people would work day and night slaving at jobs you can’t imagine. Old women would stand out in sub zero degree weather from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. selling small cups of beans or seeds for almost nothing. I saw one man that would stand all day long holding two hangers of women’s underwear, hoping for a buyer. There were beggars everywhere.
These desperate people were exchanging their time, their health, their very lives to earn a few grevna (Ukrainian currency) a day. They would work and save for weeks, sometimes months before they could rush down to the currency exchange place and trade in their giant stack of ever inflating grevna for a single, shiny piece of paper with Ben Franklin’s likeness on it─a U.S. $100 bill, their symbol of stability. It was “all about the Benjamins” as they would raise it to the sun, making sure it wasn’t a counterfeit, then race home to stash it under their bed for safekeeping. They dared not put it in a bank or entrust it to one of the varied “investment opportunities” schemes. Their total security was based on how many of those $100 bills they had hidden away.
All of us are exchanging our lives for something, aren’t we? We exchange our lives for what we believe is valuable. Jesus understood this principle very well when He said, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it. For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:25,26). Life is like a card game. We only have one hand, and we’ve got to push all our chips to the middle of the table and lay our cards down, believing we have a winner. If we are pinning those hopes on anything but the eternal person and work of Jesus Christ, we will forfeit our lives, yes our very souls.
What’s in Your Treasure Chest?
Jesus said the answer to this dilemma is to look at what we put in our treasure chest. Whatever we count as valuable we will treasure. We will hide, protect, and nourish it, just like those Ukrainians with their stash of $100 bills. Here’s the instructions from our heavenly banker: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
I’d like to challenge you to think and pray and write down what it is that you treasure, those things or beliefs that you cherish so much that you are going to hide them in your heart─your treasure chest. For whatever you esteem, whatever you exchange your time and money for, whatever you truly treasure, your heart will naturally follow. The implementation of those values is what I call…convictions. I would like to recommend seven convictions for your consideration as possible foundational building blocks for your life and ministry. I believe these are seven essentials that you need to give yourself to with absolute dedication. If you will plummet the depths of these seven convictions, you will be laying up some fantastic treasures in heaven. You will be trading your life for that which is priceless and everlasting. These are the crown jewels of the Christian life and ministry. To ignite your life and campus for Jesus Christ, you must passionately embrace them.