BURNING HEARTS
19th Apr 2017
Two discouraged people walking back home, their dreams shattered, faces downcast, all they had hoped for lying in ruins. A stranger joins them and enters their conversation, and after hearing their tale of woe begins to tell them a different story. He has words of truth, hope and destiny; suddenly everything changes.
Jesus is invited to join their evening meal and as He breaks the bread, all is revealed! Their response, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” This news so energised them that they immediately returned to Jerusalem to break the news, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” (Luke 24:13-35)
The story of the resurrection is a “Burning Hearts” message. It transforms us from discouragement, disappointment and failure into new people, with a new vision of life, new power from the Holy Spirit and a secure future. It changed the fearful disciples into bold confident people. “Burning Hearts” produced a “Burning Message.” We find Peter and John confronting the religious authorities and saying, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19)
Paul too was a man with a “Burning Message” in 1 Corinthians 9:16 he says, “Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, I am compelled to preach the gospel. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.”
The challenge to you and me is this, “Has the message of the resurrection so set our hearts on fire that we carry around with us everyday a “Burning Message” that is going to transform whoever is willing to receive life transforming words.”
All around us there are those who speak words which pull us down and undermine our hopes and dreams. When the fire within, gives us words of life, healing and salvation, we resonate with the words of Jesus, “The words that I speak they are Spirit and they are life.”
by Charles Sibthorpe
