By This is another post that benefited from Google Image search. I wrote this post on the night before our high school group went home from summer camp. Of all the posts I wrote this year, this one may have had the greatest personal impact on me. When I think about my own life with God I don’t want to have a lighter faith; I hope to have something more.
Today we’re leaving camp and heading home. It has been an awesome week spending time with students and seeing God work in their lives. I’ve spent a lot of weeks at a lot of different camps, though. I’ve seen God work in students’ lives, I’ve seen students make commitments and I’ve seen those commitments fade as time moved on.
That’s a lighter faith and God has called us to so much more. 
Our faith can be like a lighter. When trying to ignite the flame, the lighter sparks, there’s some brightness and energy. Unfortunately, sometimes that spark never gives way to flame. The spark is exciting and it’s visible. Unless it lights a flame and gives birth to something that endures, though, it’s practically useless.
I told our students that I didn’t want them to have a lighter faith. I saw their lives spark this week and it’s my deepest prayer that those sparks would give way to flame. That their love for Christ wouldn’t only be seen in the sparks, but that it would be seen in a continually burning flame.
I just don’t want that for our students, I want it for myself. I don’t want to just shoot off sparks; I want to be a flame burning brightly for Christ. We need to examine our lives to see if there’s anything impeding our flame. There will obviously be times where our flame burns brighter than others but, apart from that, I don’t want my own sin and my own choices snuffing out that flame.
The best way to ensure our flame burns its brightest is by drawing near to the one for whom it’s burning. God gives life to our flame and he is the one we should pursue to see our sparks turn into something more. We shouldn’t strive for a lighter faith which sparks and then dies out. God wants so much more for us, which is best summed up with a lyric from The Bangles.
“Is this burning an eternal flame?”
How do you stoke the fires of your faith?
The Christian Nerd 
Oh, you had me right up until you went and quoted that dratted Bangles’ song! I got so sick of hearing that thing in high school….!
But, setting that aside: this is a lovely and also challenging post. I stoke my faith’s fires (or try to – utlimately the Spirit gives growth) through daily Bible reading and prayer, and also through some of my reading (I don’t only read sci-fi and fantasy, you know!).
Thanks for these thoughts.