On the last night of our trip, we had our debriefing time around a bonfire. The Guatemalans do not build very good fires. You start with tinder on the bottom, then you build kindling on top leaving room for oxygen circulation, and then on top of that you put bigger stuff. That is the correct order. Small stuff on the bottom that will catch fire quickly and burn the medium stuff above it creating some embers to then handle the larger stuff above that.
The guy who built our fire just stacked a bunch of wood and threw gasoline on top and lit it. It went great for a few minutes, then it just smoldered. The guy came back out with some more gasoline and threw it on and it blazed for a minute, but then we had to still rearrange the wood and feed it slowly to get it to stay burning. I think there may be an allegory here!
Peter writes in his second letter:
"Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can't see what's right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
So, friends, confirm God's invitation to you, his choice of you. Don't put it off; do it now. Do this, and you'll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.
A trip like Guatemala is gasoline to your faith. but if the wood pile is not properly arranged, it will burn bright and hot for a minute, but fizz out the next. We need to rearrange our lives so that when gasoline is dumped on our faith it is an accelerant that enhances and improves what is already built.
If you left this trip on fire, and crashed when you got home, that is a sign that you need to rearrange your life. Are your values and priorities arranged in proper order? If the large log of self is at the center of the pile, and the essential accelerants are on the outside, the fire can never burn well. Rearrange your values and priorities to put Christ at the center of the fire and stack everything around Him, and when an accelerant like Guatemala is poured onto your fire, it will enhance the existing bonfire.
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