Burning Heart Message

Here at YWAM Kona, we call the message that continually burns on our hearts the “Burning Heart Message.” I have many messages, but this particular one has burned on my heart for years.

To burn your whole life for Jesus. That’s all I care about. 

To see you seek Jesus not just in 6 months intervals, but for the marathon that is eternal life. He who believes has eternal life. This is present tense. Belief is not mere speculation, it’s action that follows this side of heaven.

To see you choose Jesus when no one is looking is real faith. To see you follow the Lord at home or in the nations. To discover the Lion and the Lamb for all of your days.

You can totally start well and not finish well. 

Anyone can do a trip and burn with others who are burning. That’s contagiousness. But what is IN YOU? What remained? Some burn for 3 whole years. Some for decades. I wanna be one that it could be said of “She stayed on fire for God her whole life.” And not only that. “She burned the brightest at the end.”

When Joseph was given his prophetic dream he didn’t give up. He held onto the dream that God gave him. (Gen 37) It would take decades before anything made sense. But one day it did when he saw his brothers.

Don’t get bitter in the process of your brothers selling you out.

It was all a part of the plan.

Love one another. Then the world will know you are My disciples. If you can weep after two decades like Joseph, your heart stayed in the right place. 

Those who accept Jesus’ commands and obey them love Him. (Jn 14:21) Love is directly tied to obedience. Allow God to prune away anything that doesn’t produce fruit in your life. You can’t be fruitful unless you remain in Him. (Jn 15:4)

The Pharisees and Solomon both started with great intentions. 

The Pharisees wanted to get it right. They loved God and His law. But it got outta hand. They went above and beyond and in the process lost the heart. They became hypocrites. Jesus would say to people about the Pharisees, “Do what they teach and not what they do.” (Mt 23:3)

Never do I ever want that spoken of me. But I know that all of us have a little hypocrisy in us. We all say we believe the Bible, but don’t live it 100. So there is grace for sure, but a higher call to live consistently with what we say verses what we actually do.

All Solomon wanted was wisdom. And he got it to the tune of no one before him or after him had this much wisdom. (1 Kings 3:12) He wrote great things and things we can still read Proverbs today. But he finished with Ecclesiastes. None of the 700 wives and 300 concubines satisfied. The Kingdom was torn from him because those wives eventually led to him to choosing to follow their gods. The most wisdom, but if not applied means nothing.

If you love God, you obey Him. The two can not be separated.

Imagine if that was your dad? Writing all these great things and not walking in them. I am not a mother, but I wouldn’t want my kids saying to me “Do what mom says, but not what she does.”

How many stories do we know like that? Maybe it has been our own story.

Benefit of their doubt, the Pharisees and Solomon didn’t have the Spirit of God dwelling in them. We do. We know that voice saying “This is the way, walk in it.”

Are you willing to sign up for the long distance run? Sometimes I wonder because we say we are going to read the Bible, work out, evangelize, and get up early for our quiet time. And then nothing. We can have the best intentions and even convictions but watch it last about 2 times and we out.

How do we last? And not turn into stale bread. No one likes stale bread. By this I mean, we are going through all the motions but appearing half dead.

How do we last and burn? 

How do we resist temptation to lie, hide, commit adultery, fraud and immorality?

What is the key? What is the way?

Ask any old couple that have been married for 50+ years how they did it. I think we could find amazing parallels to our relationship with God.

I read an Acts 29 article that said:

Only 30% of leaders out of 1,000 in the Bible finished well. 

That shakes me to my core. I wanna be the Joshua and Caleb, the Paul, the Peter who said “Where could we go, You have the words of eternal life.”

I don’t wanna be the one belting “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back until I am tempted to __________/ and maybe _________.”

Just purely living “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. No turning back.”

So what is the key to walking with God your whole life?

Never stop walking with Him.

Jesus is the only perfect one in the house. We can follow Him all of our days. There isn’t a formula. He is the Shepherd and I’ll just stay close behind Him.

There is grace. Thank God. He is the only perfect One. But a higher call resonates in my soul to stay as close to that Shepherd as possible.

We gotta be awake. Alert. Focused. And stay close to the Lamb all your days.

Let’s let Him finish well in us what He started.