A few months ago, as I sat in my cozy, comfortable room in America, I wrote these prayerful words:
“Father, be the fire inside my veins. May the passion that led your Son to the cross be in me, and may the Love that poured out of His veins pour out of me.”
I think back to this moment, remembering the shameful tears I shed that night. Spiritual lethargy, my Achilles heel, had snagged me yet again. I was going through the movements of mundane life, forgetting my purpose and allowing this lethargy to dull my senses. The Love that gave me my daily breath was barely acknowledged, and my heart was hardening fast.
I share this because during times of great transition and intense pain, spiritual lethargy creeps back into it’s cozy corner of my heart. It grabs a coffee, a fuzzy blanket, and begins the binge of “Parks and Rec.” It blinds my eyes to the reality of a crumbling world, and shuts my ears to the voice of the One who created me, knows me, and seeks me. As things intensify around me, spiritual lethargy tucks itself inside and refuses to get off the couch. It feels safe, secure, and hates the discomfort that the outside world brings.
As I transition into this new world, I find myself fighting against this despicable lethargy again and again. My heart wants to know Him in my comfort, but I simply can’t know Him there. Who has ever truly known the heart of our Creator in the quiet, secure, and settled life? We serve the One who draws us out of our safe spaces into the world that is covered in His DNA. He is discovered in the unknown.
The image of fire in the veins is deeply moving to me. Fire burns, refines, and purifies. As the fire of the Almighty moves in our veins, our very life-blood is being burned away. This hurts like heck. It’s the most uncomfortable sort of refinement. But as our life-blood is being seared away, new life is coming in — the life of the Son. He is our life, our strength, and our identity.
We can’t take this wild-fire refinement sitting down. It gets us out of our warm-and-cozy, coffee-drinking, binge-watching nonsense, and spurs us onward into the unfamiliar. It’s far more painful than we could have ever imagined, but it’s worth it every time. We may find ourselves hungry, aching, bleeding, and confused, but take comfort–we are becoming more like Him in the process.
May this fiery, passionate Love of the Son drive us into uncomfortable places we dared not go before.