Breaking The Cycle

Earlier this week, I shared a story of losing a treasured necklace, finding the necklace, and then losing the necklace yet again, once and for all.   I also made the analogy of how our faith can sometimes get caught up in a similar cycle of lost and found.

I posed a question for you to ponder, which was "how do we break that lost and found cycle?"

The answer in my opinion, is simply this: 

We need to commit to building a campfire - - a campfire of faith, that is.



Play the video above, and let your thoughts wander. (email subscribers will need to click here to see the video)

Think back to a time when you enjoyed sitting around a campfire, maybe at summer camp as as child, on a camping trip with friends, or with your family as you sat around a firepit in your backyard.

As we sit beside a campfire, our body is embraced by the warmth of the hot embers that permeate the area around the fire. We hear the crackling sounds of the burning wood and watch the flames dancing all over.

We laugh as we poke our marshmallows onto the twisted coat hangers, and roast them over the hot ashes. Then we excitedly make s'mores , squishing the melted marshmallow onto the crunchy graham crackers and Hershey chocolate pieces, and then letting the morsels melt in our mouths as we devour the deliciousness.

Around the campfire, we feel warm, cozy and peaceful, inside and out.

In fact, we may be so warm and cozy, possibly even hot, that we think we can never be really cold again.  However, when it's time to go, we arise and move away from the fire, feeling the heat lessen just a bit.

We take a few more steps away from the fire, and the warmth gradually decreases.  After a few more steps, the cold air hits us like a hard reality.  Then before we know it, we are freezing cold again, from the inside out.

The only way to continue staying warm, would be to take a piece of the fire with us. To carry a flaming torch that would warm our hearts and bodies everywhere we go, so we are never too far away from the fire.

You know, our Savior is like the campfire, and our closeness to the fire is like our faith.

The farther we walk away from the Savior, the colder and more distant we will feel from His warmth.  The only solution to breaking this cycle of hot and cold faith, or lost and found faith, is staying close to the Fire, and carrying Him in our hearts each and every day.

There are many ways to carry Christ in our hearts, but one of the most important torches to carry is prayer.

Let's talk a little more about prayer tomorrow.  Until then, i want to give you a challenge.

Try to begin praying without ceasing, as we are told to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

It might be harder, or not as hard, as one would think, but its a great starting point to breaking this cycle that we all get caught up in.

So until then......

Ready, set...... pray. :)