Not “Ra Ra” but “Yes and Amen!

Fresh Manna 2008© by Pastor Tim Burt

Happy New Year to all of you – our precious friends in Christ around the world! We are praying for you!

This past year some friends of ours took Renee and I to a Minnesota Vikings Football game. We hadn’t been to one in years. The stadium was full and the energy level of the people, the excitement, and the hype – and there was plenty of it, was surging continuously. The people that organize these games make sure that there is always something going to keep the people interested and visually occupied. What was and always is amazing to me is how excited the fans get. They get wild! The noise seems like it’s off the decibel range! And hey, I was just as caught up in it. It’s fun!

Any Christian has had the thought I’m about to express and yet it’s worth verbalizing again. Can you imagine if we could live our life this excited for and about Jesus? As Christians, we all know there is nothing more exciting that what Jesus did for us, what Jesus does within us, and the unfolding of His plan in the earth. If we seriously sit down and read about it and study it, God brings revelation and insight and it does become so stirring and exciting. When we hear those that preach the word well, it moves and excites us. We love when the word convicts us and compels us to step up to all God has called us to be. And so why the lulls that we go through in God?

I believe a large part of it is because of what we spend the bulk of our time focused and meditating on. Countless people over the years have said their Bible reading carries more the feeling of duty and obligation than the desire they know they should feel. The devil tries to make a psychological mountain out of this whole thing when the answer is really simple. The feelings of your heart and your emotions are stirred and stoked by what you give yourself most over to. Read newspapers and watch news and financial broadcasts and you’ll think about stories and events that usually aren’t positive. Watch tons of television and you’ll think about your favorite shows. Whatever you give yourself over to and fill your heart with is what you’ll be filled up with. So then, again, the answer is simple and it’s not hard or complicated. Make a simple change and don’t over think it. Just do it! Choose to pick up your Bible more often in place of what you have let become a more favored pastime. Do it with the desire to learn, study, and grow and it won’t be long till you’ve stoked a fire. Do it more and more and soon your life won’t be about the ra-ra hype of football games or the fantasies of television and movies, or the intellectual bla of the endless conversations of “experts.” Do it and your heart will be filled with inspiration and hope and the greatest stories every written – and the “Yea’s and Amen” promises of God’s Word. Pray and thank God those promises are God’s covenant over your life. Then spill over and be contagious with zeal and encourage and invite others into your excitement. It’s not hype. It’s real and life changing. It’s “Yea and Amen.” Wouldn’t that be the way to start your New Year – filling your heart and mind with hope and faith focused back on the won who loves you and desires to help you?

Romans 12:11-13 Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt