By Ryan Shaw
Ryan is the international lead facilitator for Global Mission Mobilization Initiative(GMMI) and currently lives among the unreached.
This is what the Holy Spirit does when He reveals and teaches Truth to us. He takes the Bible, from beginning to end, and shines His light upon it and connects it together – always with the purpose of causing our hearts and spiritual eyes to marvel at the beauty and majesty of God in the flesh, Christ Jesus. The Spirit applies this Truth to our circumstances and situations, making it personal and real.
Aligning Our Lives
As believers, however, this process is conditional. We are to make a conscious decision to set ourselves with intentionality to meditate and engage the Word of God. The Spirit will not violate our wills in this process. Participation with “The Fellowship of the Burning Heart” is a continual choice on the part of every believer to give ourselves to the hard work, time, and energy of becoming a student of the Word of God, under the
teaching of the Holy Spirit.
In the process He sets it ablaze within us, causing its Truth and power to penetrate the very core of our being in every area of life.
This burning is two-fold in what it produces within us. First, it causes us to worship Jesus with greater clarity, understanding, adoration and whole hearted devotion. When our hearts get a hold of a new (for us) nugget of spiritual truth and we wrestle with it, praying it back to God and proactively aligning our lives with it, a burning love and desire to honor Jesus wells up within.
It is not an intellectual occurrence, but an exercise through which spiritual understanding is produced by the Holy Spirit and felt on the inside. A burning confidence in our unseen God springs forth in that moment. This is directly given through the Holy Spirit as we respond to the Word of God.
This is the second purpose. God is seeking to grow a deeper trust and dependence on Himself in every one of us. He does this as we catch a vision of the truth and essence of His Word and give ourselves with abandonment to faithfully obey that truth.
Biblically Illiterate
It is no secret that today’s generation of believers is known as the most Biblically illiterate generation in a long time. On average, believers appear not to be reading, studying, meditating, chewing, reflecting and praying the Word of God on our own as much as we ought. We go to Sunday service and listen to a message, yet we are often not personally engaging and personally interacting with the Word.
How can we have a “burning heart” apart from personally giving ourselves to hours spent with the Word of God open before us, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal it to us on a daily basis? This lack of a “burning heart” has produced a boredom among many related to the Word of God. Boredom has given way to avoiding it, which has given way to weak discipleship, which in turn has seemingly produced a fairly weak, modern church.
It is through the “burning heart,” propelled by the Word of God in partnership with the release of truth by the Holy Spirit, that our discipleship in Christ is developed and matured.
