-Calvin Coolidge
Before I made Jesus the Lord of my life, I used to sing and play guitar in nightclubs. Well, maybe nightclub isn't the right word - they were bars. Bar is really the best word, since most of the people there were in captivity! One evening I heard a man order a martini. He wanted it "shaken, not stirred."
My curiosity got the best of me, and later I asked the bartender if there was a difference between shaken and stirred or was this guy just showing off. The bartender told me that a drink was shaken instead of stirred to keep from bruising the alcohol. I laughed at the thought that alcohol could be "bruised," considering all the damage I had seen alcohol do. I could not imagine it ever being fragile. Years later I would see the spiritual parallel to this concept as it related to Christians.
Often we sit in church and hear a missionary speak. We watch their slides of lost humanity in the darkened corners of the globe and we are shaken. We feel the needs and so we give in the offering and quietly thank God that He did not call us to that foreign field.
We are shaken, but not stirred.
"Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands" (2 Tim. 1:6).
Stir yourself up this week, fan the members of your smoldering faith. I think you know how to do that, but just in case you've forgotten: get rid of sin and anything that keeps you from God. Stay in church, read the Word, pray without ceasing - you know the drill! When you are fully ablaze you will find all the power, love, and self-discipline you need to fulfill your Mission 3:16.
Excerpt permission granted by Albury Publishing