This is a repost from a blog a few months back. With ”The Call” just around the corner, I feel it is timely for this season.
Acceleration
Acceleration of vision.
We were comfortable at one time. We were fine there. We took and we gave.
I feel that we have stepped out of that comfort, similar to the comfort of a warm house on a cold winter day. We have been placed in the wilderness where there is no heat. We feel an urgency to find heat to warm ourselves. He is calling us to warm others as well.
We feel the need to start a fire. We need to heat it up.
So we look for kindling. We are to help gather this kindling to aid in the combustion of the flame. So we start gathering it and as we do we see that some of the kindling is wet, some of it is rotten, and some of it hasn’t seasoned yet and will not combust readily.
In the South, our kindling was known as “fat lighter”. Fat lighter is known to burn very hot and fast. It comes from a tree called long leaf pine and there are two ways it is made naturally:
1. The first way is when the stumps and roots of a long leaf pine become saturated with resin as they age over years. You can find these stumps buried in fields and it is in high demand because of the wood’s high combustible qualities.
2. The second way to obtain this wood is from the HEART of the tree. The heart wood of an old tree is usually saturated with resin in the same way as the roots. This resin keeps the wood from rotting and decomposing. Out of the HEART comes very strong, heavy boards that will last forever without any man-made treatment.
Since this wood is very strong and with-stands the elements so well, it is sometimes used to build houses. What one achieves is an irony of sorts, for it is a strong and everlasting house that withstands and endures what the world gives out to it, but also a house that is highly combustible that burns hotter and can quickly ignite houses next to them.
Do you want to be like that house? Do you want to burn hot with God’s love and spirit and ignite others? It’s okay if you haven’t aged yet. It’s a process. We are the kindling. God is starting a fire. But we are to help gather that kindling. And he will season it, he will dry the wet wood, and he will change the kindling, the person, into what and where he has them to be.
It’s time to start gathering, building, and burning for him.