Burners

I have been grilling for a very long time. I am not the best griller in the world, but I love to do it. Since college, I have probably had more grills than the average person. Each one was replaced because we just wore them out; in fact, I’ve even had the bottom of a grill fall out on me while I was cooking.

About two years ago we bought a stainless grill (which to be stainless is a joke within itself). In December of last year, the grill got to where it would not burn all four burners at once. Instead, it would only allow three of them to burn at a time. Now, I could pick which three I wanted to burn at any given time, but it was three and no more. If you tried to turn on the fourth burner, it would kill the rest of the burners.

In February of this year, the grill decided to only allow me to burn 2 burners at a time. It was gracious enough to let me pick which two burners I wanted to use, but would not allow me to burn 3 of them at the same time.

This past Friday, the grill deiced to only allow me to use one burner at a time. Now again, it has been gracious enough to allow me to choose which burner I want to use, but limits me to only one. The other burners will not work with each other.

This hinders the effectiveness of what the grill was designed for. It also prevents the grill from burning as hot as it could.

This is the same thing that happens in churches. Instead of following God’s design for how a church works, (He chooses and under-shepherd, He calls elders, deacons are selected from the congregation, and the congregation serves God) we tend to branch off and burn when we want to. This prevents us from joining God in His plan, because we become more concerned with our plan(s). We start burning when we want to rather than when and how He wants us to burn. We quit burning together as a church, wanting others to burn with us for our cause instead of God’s. (Of course we can make our own causes sound like they’re God’s when they are not) This hinders the effectiveness of what the church was designed for, and it prevents the church from burning as hot as it could for the Lord.

Now let me be clear…I am not talking about Farmington Baptist Church. So there is nothing going on in our church that has prompted this blog posting. If there was, I would not be posting this. It was just a thought I had on Friday while grilling… nothing more.

However it is a reminder to us, an encouragement if you will, to stick together and to burn together. That’s called unity. And God uses that.

After all, when we burn together, we become an answer to His prayer…. “May they be one”

PS (As if you can do that on a blog)
Now I have to figure out how we are going to get a new grill…the old one has to go.

My prayer is we will follow God in such away we are never the “grill” that needs to be replaced.