So I have started trying to learn from these brothers and sisters who were bonkers enough to believe Jesus’ teaching literally as strategic guidance.  What I’ve learned is that it is not rocket science.  It is pretty simple stuff.  It has more to do with courageous obedience than profound strategic thinking.  So around our place we have struggled to find some vehicles that help us grasp the simplicity and remember it so that we can give it away easily.  What we’ve found is a simple use of the Four Elements:

:: Fire

:: Earth

:: Air

:: Water

 

Fire

Luke 14:26 says that the heat that we carry in our hearts for Him must overwhelm what we carry for even the most precious and special relationships in our lives.  It is a daunting and shocking challenge.  I have been a bit unsure of how to approach it for years.  It helps that everyone points out Jesus is speaking in hyperbole rather than literally asking me to “hate” these people!  Yet what is Jesus on about?

Fire.  Jesus is on about fire.  This gig is meant to burn in you.  Jesus knows all too well the idolatrous hearts of human beings and knows that as a result any relationship that threatens to burn as hot as that for Him will eventually eclipse Him in our hearts, and lead us astray into a false dependence on that formerly “good” thing, turning it destructive.  You were meant to burn for Him.  You were meant to be gripped by Him in a way that you barely have words to describe.

 Rather than “good news”…we often, in the West, carry merely “mediocre news”

This is key to mission because rather than “good news” that compels us out into the fields we often, in the West, carry merely “mediocre news” and engage missionally out of a muddy combo of good manners and the desire to be someone who would do those sort of things.  But “good news?”  It burns.

Here is a test with which a writer named Neil Cole rocked me… read 2 Corinthians 11:23-33 and see the kind of life that Paul lived for Christ.  Intense.  Very not seeker friendly.  But then read 1 Timothy 1:12-17 and read his take on whether it was worth it or not?  See what I mean?

Only Fire writes that.

Fire is not complicated.  Just hot.  And it is the Biblical norm.