Have you ever felt like you were losing the fire for God?
You may have noticed yourself procrastinating to spend time with God, just trying to get through your daily bible devotionals, and the thought of sin becoming more attractive to you.
Whatever the case, you know you want to have a heart on fire for God, but the desire to seek him is slowly going away.
So what can you do?
In this post, I’ll show you how to reignite the fire for God and give you 4 tips to continue burning for him.
Let’s get into it!
Table of contents:
Intro
How To Rekindle Your Fire
4 Practical Tips to Keep The Fire Burning For God
The most important thing you need to know about burning for Jesus
Did you know that your mind is programmed to always look for something new and pay less attention to things you already know or have experienced?
It’s kind of like when you get a salesman at the door.
The moment you open the door and see the uniform and clipboard, your mind already knows that it’s a salesman and you try to shut down the conversation as fast as possible so you can go back inside.
Why?
Your mind has seen and heard this before, and you know what happened last time (you bought the vacuum didn’t you?)
But what would happen if that same person came up to your door and the first words out of his mouth was:
“Your neighbor’s house is on fire.”
You better believe you’d be paying attention and would want to know more.
That is because in order for their to be hunger and a desire to know more, there needs to be something new.
Otherwise, you will eventually get bored of looking for something that you already know the outcome of.
The good news is that there is always something new that God wants to show you and do in your life that will keep you excited about knowing more about him.
There is just one thing that you need:
A fresh new encounter with the living God that will ignite a desire for more of him.
Just like you cannot live on the food you ate 2 months ago, you cannot live on the same spiritual encounter you had with the Lord 2 months ago.
You need to be filled with the Spirit of God.
But How?
How To Rekindle Your Spiritual Fire
Whenever I feel like I’m losing my desire for God, the first thing I do is set aside time in my day (at least an hour) to take my mind off of everything and come before the Lord as I am.
When I’m in the secret place, I don’t try to put on a show for him or fake the fact that I honestly don’t feel like pursuing him. I tell him how it is.
If there is something I need to surrender to him, I do it. If there is something I need to repent of, I do that.
Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)
Afterward, I ask him to reignite the fire in my life, to give me new revelation into his word, and give me a desire to pursue him.
But more than anything, I ask the Lord for a new encounter with Him.
I do this because I am in a constant need of a fresh revelation of his love and goodness towards me. When I encounter his presence and spend time gazing upon his beauty, it changes everything.
When I come to know His love for me, I am able to love him more. (1 John 4:19)
Usually what happens is I either encounter him at that moment or it will happen in another moment when I don’t really expect it.
When I do, I’m left with a greater love for him and a strong desire to spend time with Him again.
How to sustain and grow the fire of God in your life
Let’s say you’ve just come from a retreat that had a super fire prayer and the presence of God was thick. You encountered the Lord and you feel hungry for more.
However…
Now you know you have to go back to the routine of your normal life and your environment where everything is exactly as it was before.
How do you continue to burn for the Lord and even increase the hunger when you’re no longer on a spiritual high?
In this part of the post, I’ll share 4 tips that have helped me continue to burn for Jesus in the daily rhythms of life.
4 Practical Tips to Keep The Fire Burning For God
1. Break the habit
Sometimes all you need to encounter the Lord in a fresh new way is to make a change in the way that you seek him.
Here’s what I mean:
One of the things that I like to do when I pray is to ask the Lord this:
“Father please show me how you want me to seek you”
This has lead to some amazing new discoveries in my secret place.
Often times, The Lord will put something on your heart that may seem out of the ordinary, but will reveal His heart in a beautiful way.
For example:
As I was spending time with the Lord one time, I had a strong desire to draw a picture that He showed me. So I pulled out a notebook and started to draw while sharing my thoughts with Him.
That day, I experienced the presence of God in a magnificent and beautiful way that made me feel like a child who was spending quality time with his father.
It’s the little things that can often make the biggest differences.
2. Godly friends
One of the biggest factors that has helped sustain my hunger for the Lord is my circle of friends.
I have a few brothers in Christ who are constantly seeking Jesus, receiving new revelations, and encountering Him in amazing ways.
Proverbs 27:17 says “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”
They share their experiences with me, pray with me, and help build me up so that I am encouraged to continue seeking the Lord.
Even when I don’t feel like seeking god sometimes, when I see their hunger to pray, it lights me up to seek the Lord.
This works the other way as well.
If your closest friends don’t care about pursuing God, they will only extinguish the fire in you over time. They will discourage you from talking about God, sharing your experiences, and will only push you to pursue worldly things.
They may be decent people with good intentions, but if their number one priority in life isn’t the Lord, I can bet that pretty soon, neither will yours.
I want to encourage you that if you don’t have any good friends, start to pray for Godly friends who will build you up. Try to spend less time with those who discourage you from talking about God, and more people who openly speak about the name of Jesus.
3. Sharing Jesus
I’ve noticed that whenever I go long periods of time without sharing the Gospel with people, I start to dry out.
Then, when I start sharing Jesus again, It’s like fresh water is poured on me and I’m refreshed.
Psalms 34:1 says “I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth”
There’s something that happens when you begin to share Jesus with unbelievers continually throughout your life.
You are reminded of why you follow Christ and you see other people encounter God, which gives you a hunger for more.
But not just evangelism…
Whenever I share something about what God is doing in my life or what he’s been teaching me with friends, I encounter the presence of God and I get fired up just talking about it.
That’s what the word of God does to you.
4. Man Shall Not live on bread alone…
Another thing that has drastically changed and empowered my walk with the Lord is a lifestyle of fasting.
There have been many moments where I felt like I was burning out that I entered a fast and came out hungry for more of God.
When you fast, it takes your mind off the things of the flesh and centers your attention on Jesus. It allows you to experience Jesus in a deeper way and clears your mind to be able to hear his voice for your life.
When asked why His disciples didn’t fast, Jesus said:
“The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.” (Mark 2:20)
Jesus expected his disciples to fast after He left in order to experience a nearness to Him that could only be replaced by his physical presence with them.
If you’re looking to stay hungry for God, I would encourage you to set aside time every month to go on a fast for at least 3 days. If you can’t do it for three days, do one or two days.
The goal is to stay consistent with it.
Sometimes God will call you to go on a fast randomly. It’s always been so rewarding to be obedient to his call to fast and has increased my love for Him in new ways.
In Conclusion
In order to have a heart on fire for God, you need to constantly have a new encounter with him.
It is through these new encounters that you develop an even greater desire to know him and the fire is renewed.
As the fire for God is renewed, you need to be able to sustain it with more fuel. You can do this by changing up the way you spend time with God, surrounding yourself with Godly friends, sharing your faith with those around you, and making fasting a part of your lifestyle.
Now I want to hear from you:
What do you do to stay burning for Jesus?
Let me know in the comments below!
Powerful message! Thanks for sharing! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥Definitely going to keep my fire burning for His presence in my life!
Thank God for this inspiring and moving message. Ive been trying to search sermons for my spiritual feeding and blessed to read this.
These words strike me most:
“A fresh new encounter with the living God that will ignite a desire for more of him.
Just like you cannot live on the food you ate 2 months ago, you cannot live on the same spiritual encounter you had with the Lord 2 months ago.”
We really need to have new encounter with the Lord. We must not hold on to our previous encounter,we need fresh exprience of God’s presence and power.
Godbless you more!
That was a powerful word, sir! Keep the fire burning.
Thanks for sharing this good news. I believe it’s God who gave you the inspiration to write this post. If we don’t burn for Jesus, I don’t know what else we should be burning for so I pray that God blesses you and give you more wisdom in what you’re doing. Amen.
Thank you Christian!
I felt like the fire in me was drowning, but thanks be to God I chanced on your post and trust me I feel deep within that I’m completely revived. Something in me has pushed me even closer to Jesus. God bless you so much. Keep on because you don’t know who will come reading post like these. I’ve been blessed 🙏.
Praise God, that’s amazing!
What a beautiful post! It’s a great reminder that we must never stop thirsting for more of God. As the deer pants for the water, so our lives should long after the things of God.
Thank you Eunice!
I love everything about this, and I needed this very much. To be honest as I read this I feel God calling me closer, like He is saying… Jennifer come get away with me, let me give you a new encounter with me today.
Praise God! That is so amazing to hear! He is always longing to spend time with his sons and daughters.