J dly, 1937
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
243
Fuel of the Flame of By VANCE HAVNER
God
T HIS cynical, bitter, and disillusioned old world needs to see more often the miracle of a man or woman desperate ly in love with Jesus Christ. This sophis ticated generation runs all too rarely into the phenomenon of a human torch passionately happy to be the fuel of the Flame of God. Such human firebrands as these sweep through the dead, dull world around them making ordinary Christianity look drearily tame and commonplace. To meet such a soul is like finding a visitor from another planet— as indeed it is meeting an ambassador from another realm, one whose citizenship is in heaven. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth looking for one person who will really consent to burn up for God. We sing about it, jpreach about it, pray about i t ; but few are the reckless souls who actual ly will become fools for Christ’s sake, who will love not their lives to the death, and count them not dear, who gladly will fling themselves with holy abandon at the feet of their Lord. We sing: To the old rugged cross I will ever be true, Its shame and reproach gladly bear. But we leave the reproach in the hymn book; to be counted the scum of the earth and the offscouring of all things is too much for us who love all too well to keep up with the Joneses. Ours is a respectable, comfortable faith: we will consent to attend a mission ary meeting and listen to some scarred vet eran tell of enduring hardness in a distant land. We may even shed a sympathizing tear and contribute gladly to let another per form the task. But for you or me to be con sumed with the zeal of God’s house until relatives shall grow solicitous about our mental state as did the friends of our Lord, or to stir up the gift of God within us until smoldering coals shall blaze into Heavenly Flame, and Festus complain that we are mad—ah, we much prefer our own comfort. “He is beside himself” (Mk. 3:21). They said it of our Lord. “Thou art beside thy self” (Acts 26:24). They said it of Paul. “Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God” (2 Cor. 5:13). They will say it of us if we walk in their steps. (And why shouldn’t we be “beside ourselves” ? We are nothing in ourselves!) There are not two gospels, one for mis sionaries and martyrs, the other for those who name the name of Christ but let Him bear the cross alone while they themselves {The author is Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Charleston, S. C.]
go free. In the beginning of the church it was not only the apostles who were beside themselves. That entire first fellowship of saints lived so truly like a colony of heaven, not conformed to the world but transformed, that the world hounded them and branded them as the wildest of fanatics. No wonder they shook the world! Such people have al ways been well-nigh irresistible. What can stand before a blood-washed, fire-baptized throng, rejoicing to be counted worthy to suffer for Jesus’ namel O verwhelmed by L ove for C hrist It is possible to know such a consuming love for Jesus Christ that one is lifted to a holy abandon and a heavenly recklessness and is hilariously immune to this world’s fears and fevers. There are few men and women who have not been at some time in their lives so desperately in love with some one that they were beside themselves and often almost irrational in their exhilaration. If the love of man for woman can so intoxicate us, is it not to our everlasting shame that our hearts can be so unresponsive toward Christ Jesus, Lover of our souls? Must He. not stand among us today, grieved at the hardness of our hearts, and say as He did long ago: “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love” ? If we loved Him desperately, if we loved Him so passionately that all other loves were as hatred, if we loved Him as He deserves to be loved, would not our hearts rise above the circumstances and conditions of this dull world? Have you not seen young lovers so absorbed in each other that they were oblivious to all else? If we loved Him truly, would we not be 'unmindful of most things that concern and worry us now? And yet, have you not noticed also how love makes the lover kindly disposed toward every one except that one who would steal the affec tions? If we loved our Lord with the whole heart, we would love all men and hate only him who would break our communion, Satan, the arch-enemy of our souls. We have toned down the first-century Christian fervor because it makes our in sipid church life look pitiful in comparison. Scholars have endeavored to establish that the characteristics of those early saints were not meant to be sustained down through the centuries—that the first flaming fervor was a sort of double portion to get the church off to a good start! But who can believe that God meant for His people to begin at a high pitch and then {Continued on page 249]
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