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  • Sean 11:45 AM on January 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    ‘What is This?’ – By Bradley Andrews 

    What is this.
    I’m tired of playing this game,
    I don’t want no fame or claim,
    I want to be who God created me to be,
    I want to make my stand and not flee.

    But Lord sometimes I feel all alone,
    I call but no one picks up the phone,
    People ask me how I”m doin and pass by,
    but they don’t even take time to look me in the eye.

    And I’ve seen people come and gone in my life,
    people hurting with so much strife,
    how much longer must I wait for my Savior,
    I’m trying to keep on with my behavior.

    But things get so hard and sometimes I don’t know what to do,
    O God! O God! I need you,
    O Lord fulfill our hearts where other areas are lacking,
    Give me strength so I can send Satan and his minions packing.

    This is how I feel sometimes,
    but I know my God will get me through these times,
    So i remind you that you are not alone,
    for He is watchin on high from His glorious thrown

    He sees and understands you the most,
    He will always be there and will never tell you adios.
    He loves and cares for you.
    He is there even for you too.

    Bradley A.

     

  • Sean 11:44 AM on January 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Dust and the Rain 

    My soul is lifted light
    As rain drops patter outside
    It’s been a long time since
    This desert land has seen rain

    God, rain down inside
    It’s been too long and my soul is dry
    My tongue desires to taste of Living Water
    Turn this desert into a rainforest

    My heart is beating, beating faster
    Living in this barren place is no place to be
    But now you send down this blessing
    All Creation smiles

    God, rain down inside
    It’s been too long and my soul is dry
    My tongue desires to taste of Living Water
    Turn this desert into a rainforest

    I want to know You
    Fill my life, overflowing
    Of fruits that bring You glory

     

  • Sean 6:21 PM on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: accepted, forsaken, , loved, , rejection, saved, worthy   

    Hill on Ephesus 

    They looked at me just once
    Before I was cast on the hill of Ephesus
    The world didn’t love me
    The world didn’t find me worthy
    Left to die, rejected and empty

    On that hill, I cried out
    Waiting to die
    Waiting to be taken away
    If life was living, this was simply existing

    I was left out and forsaken
    Never knowing what real love felt like
    Never understanding what it meant to be valued

    Then You came into my world
    Picking me up off my back and holding me
    Tight to Your chest so I couldn’t slip away

    I didn’t feel worth it
    But You brought out my strengths
    You took me on journeys and gave me purpose

    When I didn’t feel loved
    You showed me so much love
    You filled the void

    In the world I am forsaken
    But in Your arms I am complete
    Just as You wanted me to be

    I was tossed away
    But You picked me up
    And called me Yours,
    A child of God

     

  • Sean 12:44 PM on January 16, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Greed 

    I’ve had writer’s block recently but was able to conquer that today and wrote this.

    This world, this economy
    A disaster wrought by our hands
    The calloused hands of man

    Greed takes
    Greed spends
    It doesn’t love
    It doesn’t give

    Have we been bought out so easily?
    We sell our lives to this
    Climbing the corporate disaster
    Making a hollow mockery of ourselves
    That we’d be shallow enough
    To devote our lives to this

    Greed takes
    Greed spends
    It doesn’t care
    It doesn’t give

    In the end we hold our earnings
    In our hands with dying plans
    It was never really worth as much to our hearts
    As we told ourselves it would be
    In the end, we just sold ourselves to slavery

    Greed takes
    Greed spends
    It doesn’t care
    It doesn’t give

    We were working for nothing
    The gold and silver in our hands
    Turns to rust and crumbles away
    In the blink of an eye

    Love gives
    Love earns
    It is selfless
    It is free

     

  • Sean 1:12 PM on January 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Artists – Lecrae 

    Hey! If you’ve never heard of Lecrae and you are a fan of rap music you really need to check Lecrae out. His work is so emotional, powerful, and thought provoking. Check this out:

     

  • April Buff 8:07 PM on December 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

    An Introduction to My Life With Christ (My Testimony) 

    Hey everyone. As you might have figured, I am a new author to this site. I saw that people were sharing their testimonies on here, so I figured it would be a good kind of introduction.

    My story is rooted in my search for something beyond this world. I looked to the world to fill my void inside. After quite a few attempts, I finally realized one day that nothing in this vile earth could fulfill what I really needed. But for me to realize that, there was a cost. Sure, I didn’t go as far into the pleasures of the world as others…but even so, I still had so much frustration with it that eventually I would have ended up jumping in my own coffin, anxious to be fed to the soil. Suicide.
    Growing up as a homeschooler, I was always around my family. The only time I was around other people was when I went to church. For a while I made my circumstances worse than they could have been. I shied away from others when I was a kid. I always kept to myself. I was even given the name, “The Quiet One.” The usual kid who got left out of things and got picked last and what-not. I always felt that for someone to befriend me, they had to come to me first. I always read excessively to escape from reality, and because I just loved it so much. I’ve been a book worm since I was three years old. I was picked on a lot, and I always thought of myself as a ghost to others. I felt neglected even in my Sunday school setting, and I basically had no friends and envied those who did. I did come to my mom at the age of seven (What a great age to do that…eh?) and I told her I wanted to be saved. I knew Christ was in my heart, but I didn’t acknowledge Him as my savior and my friend. He always convicted me of things, but I started to ignore it more and more. Eventually, as I got older and I was around ten and eleven, I found self-help books and online networking sites. I talked to people online because it was comfortable to me and I could alter myself anyway so that someone could like me. I took up writing at about the age of twelve, because I was taught it in my school work, and when I was assigned to write something myself, I discovered I was really good at poetry. I still felt very lonely having friends online, and even though I was reading self-help books and realized I needed to put myself out there, I still felt so lonely. I had a couple of friends, but they weren’t true to me, they were very shallow friends. With all this loneliness welling up inside, I would turn to poetry to vent my feelings. I wrote over fifty poems out of my depression. At first when I started writing depressing things, I didn’t realize it was because I was depressed. It took me a couple months to realize I was, because at first the depression was deeper down. It seemed I kept trying to push down those feelings by writing them out. Eventually they surfaced after I got in trouble with a boy I talked to online. We were planning to meet in person. Our plans were very off-color…for lack of a better word. My mom was suspicious. I told her I was going to buy her a Mother’s day present. She made me put my right hand on the Bible and swear I wasn’t going to meet him up there, so I did. There was no way I could break that promise. I saw him there, but we didn’t interact. To this day I’m so thankful my mom did that, because not too long after that, I heard he got a girl pregnant.

    There was one day that I recall, it was the worst depression I’ve ever felt. I don’t remember what I did, but my mom wanted to take everything from me that I was using to fill that emptiness inside. I tried running away twice and failed…so when I couldn’t, I took multiple objects to my left forearm and tried drawing blood. I knew poetry wouldn’t numb this sort of pain. I felt like I needed to bleed it out. One of the things I attempted to break my skin with was a cross necklace I had that was made of nails. I remember seeing it and thinking to myself, “What am I doing?” Christ already suffered for me and drew His blood on the cross so I could bear the Holy Spirit, and that it bridged the gap between me and God. I knew that was the truth, but I was too ignorant and unwise at the time that I took my own way of dealing with that void. I had a huge gash on my forearm from that, and I told people I had just burned myself on accident whenever they would ask. Luckily it didn’t turn into an addiction.

    Recently, I have been feeling the same loneliness that I did at those times because I know I am an outcast, and that I’m a foreigner, and I’m not friends with the world or anyone of the world. But whenever I do feel that loneliness, I remember a poem I wrote about that feeling:

    Clusterphobia

    My mind is skipping around aimless thoughts
    I’m getting out of focus
    Too often I rely on materials
    To keep me in line
    When every day I pray for You to keep me here
    Because I often want to stray
    To somewhere I don’t belong
    When I know this is your weakness you’ve given to me
    So I can grow to be strong
    If this is what you want, then so be it
    Although I keep looking into other lands
    Help me to desire what I have here
    Hundreds of acres to run free in
    But I’m being deceived to think it’s a square foot
    Open my mind
    So I will not be deceived concerning where I stand

    I believe this recent relapse with feeling alone was to refresh this memory so I could write this out. Whenever I have this feeling, I know I’m being selfish.

    It took many things for me to turn from my ignorance. I went on mission trips, concerts, and a play that gave a message of salvation. I had a few relapses, so therefore a few more moments where I had to repent. I’ve always felt and have been told that I was made to do great things in this world, and that God is going to use me in a big way. I have never doubted this, because the struggle within my soul has been so hard, but God has always prevailed. Already I’ve been told by a few people that something I’ve written or said has impacted them, but I take no credit. It’s all been Christ. He has taught me more and more obedience, and has revealed some of His wisdom to me because I’ve asked for it. I know that what I say must be heard, and that I must speak out…yet my worst fear is speaking in front of people. A couple of months ago, I was asked to give a personal account of my experience on my most recent mission trip. The funny thing is that I knew it was coming a week before it did. God was telling me He needed me to speak out..and I knew some sort of public speaking was coming up. I was supposed to speak in front of the whole congregation of my church. like 300+ people. A few days before that, my mom told me she had a dream that I was speaking in front of people in like a classroom setting, and that I was speaking so low that no one could hear me. She said that her and my youth pastor’s wife were telling me I needed to speak up, and that what I had to say was important. She told me she felt like God was telling her to tell me these things. CONFIRMATION! I was blown away by this. But the night before I was hit with the reality that I was going to be facing my biggest fear the following day. I was crying so hard from my fear, and I was thinking of totally ditching it, but I didn’t, after counseling from a good friend that night. They talked me out of quitting. The next day I was up there to that podium, shaking, and my voice was cracking, and every other word was, “Um.” But I didn’t care, because I was not silenced by fear. I feel I need to use my voice, and that with it, God is going to do great things.

    What I experience with Christ is worth more than anything on this earth. When I tried to satisfy that hunger in my spirit with things of this world…all it brought me was pain and less of a will to live. But now I am thankful for this life that I have in Christ. He brought me out of my sickness and my pain, and drew me into His loving arms. Since then, I’ve been slowly growing closer and closer to Him, and my writings have been improving more and more. My life is fully committed to Christ, and there’s nothing more valuable to me in this world than Him.

    So here’s the raw story of my life so far.

     

  • Sean 10:09 PM on December 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

    Broken World 

    Oh, we live in a broken world
     With our broken lives, our broken relationships
    And our broken hearts

    Every day is a masquerade party
    With our broken grins
    And our false “doing well” statements


    Everyone is scared to come out of hiding
    Because we have no more tears to give
    Afraid of finding more pain
    Afraid to have to fear
    Afraid that might be the     death of us

    So we shut our eyes tight and cradle our hearts in our hands
    Wondering what to do with it
    Because it drives us on as if there was something more


    The human soul is a black hole without hope
    A black hole, like a dead weight
    That is constantly telling us something is wrong
    It seeks hope and expects to find it


    Almost as if hope is there

    Hope is like a drop of rain
    Falling from heaven, giving a glimpse of what’s to come
    It whets the parched man’s tongue

    If there is hope, we have to break out
    Take off our costumes and masks
    And open our eyes,     holding up our hearts
    With our trembling hands

    Exposed.

    Hope is found when we break all the laws
    And go against the very framework we’ve been living in
    Hope is found when we take faith and believe in something preposterous
    That makes our heart leap with the wish that it were true

    In a broken world, with our broken lives and broken hearts
    It takes something radical, because only hope can be held for something that radically changes our lives and this world.


    ————-

    We have to admit, we are living in a broken world and we are a broken people. Anyone from any background, born to any city across the world of any belief system could tell you that. And I’ve been pondering. And this pondering led me to write this experimental poem.

    Why is it that some people are so filled with hope? Why is it that those who don’t have hope, so desperately seek it? This desire for something greater, for something to hope in seems to be a part of human life, everywhere. Every human being seeks to hope in something whether they find something in which to truly hope for or not.

    It’s almost as if we are hardwired with the need to hope in something. We are seekers–seekers of something–as if designed with a passion and desire to hope in something greater because we are actually meant to find something greater to hope in.  This is not just a hole that we so desire to fill, but it is also a hole that can’t seem to be filled by just anything. Many of us have tried to fill it with the various things of this life, but none of it really seems to fit.

    This is why I believe what we’re supposed to hope in has to be something radical, because nothing of this world seems to be adequate enough. And how would it be if that’s where the root of the problem is?  We are a broken people in a broken, broken world. If everything here is broken, how can we expect it to fix us or to replace the piece inside of us that we are missing?

    Of course, this creates a reaction in us. Once we’ve found out that nothing here is worth hoping in, our hope for something more either dies or moves on to something greater that is outside of this world, that is outside of human nature. But even those who have let their hope die, even they still have deep longing to find something worth hoping in.

    Something radical can only be beyond our flawed human nature. It has to be beyond normal thinking and normal selfish desire. I believe that this something greater is there but since we are so trained to think within our own nature, we fail to see it, even if it has been plainly given to us.

    I’m talking about a loving God. I’m talking about Something that created us with a love and with a desire to have a relationship with us which we made our own choice not to have. Human nature separates us from God because we don’t see things the way God does. We don’t see each other the way God does. We don’t value or love each other the way God does.

    Throughout history, God has chased after us to bring us to Him. The climax of this story of love came when God sent His Son, Jesus to save us from our own destruction. But He didn’t stop there. God has been at work in the world ever since. I’ll bet you’ve had a few encounters with God too, whether you recognized it or not.

    This love and this God that I’m talking about is so radical that I’m talking about something completely different than religion because religion still resides within human nature. Religion is a mechanism fueled by the desire to hide behind something, to gain power through, or to appear great. All of those things are a part of human nature. This God thing is deeper than that. It is about the very fabric and reason for our existence. It is a harmonious relationship of love, true love, between Creator and creation–one that brings the  Creator great joy and glory. Through it is hope, faith, love, contentment, joy and peace.

    Examples of this are few and far between but when you meet someone who is a follower of this God, you can tell something is different. They are still people but they are so loving, so sacrificial and so uncaring about how others see them that there is also something unnatural about them. They leave a mark, because you can’t help but remember them. They change lives because Christ is changing lives through them. It doesn’t seem to make sense, yet it seems to click within our hearts that that is the way things should be, even if it is unnatural to us.

    Something so radical is jarring, confusing and insulting the human nature that we’ve lived by so long. It breaks the chains that hold together how we’ve viewed everything in life. It challenges the very core of our being. In the end we can only accept it and let it change us or reject it and carry on. It doesn’t make sense but only something that is truly so radical and truly so worth hoping in could make a real change in our lives, hearts and in our world.

     

  • April Buff 6:17 PM on December 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

    Knees 

    It’s weird thinking about how our actions affect our souls.
    And yet we take our actions lightly.

    I believe that when we are on our knees, it was meant to be uncomfortable.
    It’s a sort of sacrifice to God. A sacrifice of our comfort.
    Sure, it’s not so uncomfortable being on your knees… but it’s more about being in a position you’re not in usually. It’s different from sitting, standing or laying down.
    I remember in youth group a long time ago, we had a worship service. The youth leader told us all to get on our knees in worship. We all obeyed. It was not long until I shifted to a more comfortable position. Looking all around the room you’d see the same with everyone else. They kept shifting around trying to get comfortable. Then there was the worship leader, throughout the whole thing, he remained on his knees.
    We constantly want to make ourselves comfortable. Take a look at all these different kinds of beds you can get to suit your comfort. Like the sleep number…you can set it to your exact level of comfort.
    We have recliners
    We have seats in our cars
    We have chairs at our dinner tables
    We have couches in our living rooms
    We have lawn chairs
    Hammocks
    Air mattresses for when were away from our nice and comfy bed and we have to sleep on the ground.

    We are OBSESSED with comfort.And why?
    Of course, it is a great thing to keep our necks and backs in line…but not only do we make ourselves comfortable physically, we make ourselves comfortable in every way. Spiritually, emotionally, and sometimes mentally.

    When we feel like weve done our part spiritually, we’ve had our daily Bible reading that was far from our minds and hearts, we feel we can say were done for the day. That was a comfortable amount of scripture reading.

    When we feel hurt inside emotionally, we seek comfort from our friends, family and God. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. God intended emotional pain to bring us closer to Him. 1 Peter 4:13 “But rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.” We can know that in our pain, it will bring us closer to God, and it is temporary.

    When we fill our minds with sexuality, do we feel comfortable in that? Can it be? Why else would someone want to fill their minds with it?It feels good to those who think those thoughts. It provides them solace. But lust comes from a deep dissatisfaction with life. Theres many other things we think of in our minds, and not all of it comforts us, but our thoughts can lead us to do things we never even intended in our hearts to do. We hold our hearts captive when we think corrupt thoughts.

    When a man gets on one knee when he proposes to a woman, I don’t think it would be as comfortable as standing. I’m not sure why this has been practiced…but I admire it. If he were to be on two knees, I would think that would look as if he were begging her to marry him. I think maybe being on one knee instead of two can be looked at as someone who wants you to marry them, but isn’t making it more of an imperitive. At least that’s what it means to me.

    When we are on both knees in worship to God, were setting ourselves low as a beggar does.I get on my knees in prayer when I think the request is very important and I’m in a time of desperation. But our lives always reflect desperation. Us, who are of God, have only experienced a small part of Him, and our lives reflect our need for Him every second of the day.

    I feel we should abandon our comfortable lives, and be on our knees, giving up our comfort in order to follow Christ. I don’t feel we earn His love by this way, but I think that if Christ died for us, the least we can do is live for Him. To live for Him, we should give up comfort, and not live as the world does, but to come out of our shells and comfort zones that our fears and insecurities have conjured, and follow Christ.

    Because Jesus didn’t live a comfortable life on earth.

    - April B.

     

  • Sean 7:36 PM on December 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

    Back to Normal 

    Hurray! Everything at A Fire in the Flame is ship-shape again. I upgraded the framework stuff for AFIF a few days ago and it caused the regular theme (what determines how AFIF looks) to go all wonky. As a result, I had to replace the regular theme with a different one. Thankfully the problem seems to have disappeared and now AFIF is back to running like it normally does.

    PS: A Fire in the Flame has just recently surpassed 100 posts! I’ve been looking at the usage stats too and it looks like AFIF has been getting between 150-200 unique visitors each month. Very interesting as well as exciting!

     

  • Sean 3:48 PM on December 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

    Throwing Pearls Before Swine 

    I hope you know but,
    If you’ve never been told this before
    This truth, I can’t hide
    Even if you don’t believe

    You’re so beautiful (on the inside)

    It’s the words that hide quietly
    Behind all the lies
    But society would tell you otherwise

    It’s such a struggle to meet an impossible goal
    Only so they can tell you that you’re beautiful (on the outside)
    And that’s as far as they will ever look

    I hope you know but,
    If you’ve never been told this before
    This truth, I can’t hide
    Even if you don’t believe

    You’re heart is worth more than the world’s gold
    And no one can change that
    You’re worth more than all the majestic birds of the air
    Or the flowers of the fields

    You’re brilliance is unmeasurable
    That a God would risk it all
    Just to win your heart

    And I pray
    And He cries
    Don’t give that away

    And even if you don’t believe
    This truth, simply can not hide

    You are valuable before a mighty and loving God
    You have pearls; don’t throw them before the swine

    I wrote this poem a few months ago based on a particular incident that happened on Facebook. A couple other guys I know and I unwittingly added a webcam stripper as a friend on Facebook. This girl who went by the name of Pamela was going through friendlists and requesting guys to be friends. Now she didn’t have any bad pictures that would have tipped any of us off and I noticed that some other people I knew were friends with her so I added her too. We were all wondering about this mysterious girl, thinking that she was a friend of another of our friend’s.

    Well, as it turns out, I was working on homework one day while also logged in to Facebook. I mean, doesn’t everyone mess around on Facebook when they should be doing homework? Anyways, one of my buddies initiated a chat with me and started warning me about this girl, saying he had just talked to her and found out that she was a stripper. He was warning me so that I could remove her from my friend list, take some sort of action, etc. Yet, he warned me not a minute too soon because as soon as I finished talking to him, Pamela initiated a Facebook chat with me. We exchanged casual ‘hello’s’ and then she immediately started soliciting herself, asking for my AIM account so she could share pictures. Thanks to being warned, I knew exactly what that meant.

    I basically told her that I was not into that and that I wanted to honor God with my eyes. I told her that she was worth a lot to God and that she should not sell her self as being worth less than she really is. Later she got on and talked with another of my friends, and he pretty much said the same thing to her. He asked her a few times why she was doing this and her only answer was that it was her job. Anyways, we reported her and removed her from our friend lists to keep her from adding more unsuspecting friends. She has since been removed from Facebook.

    What really struck me was that the only answer she could give as to why she was doing what she was doing was that it was her job. How heart breaking! I’ve heard that 95% of the girls in the sex industry had absent fathers. They never grew up knowing what a real man should look like. They never got to understand the concept of what true love is. I’ve also heard that 80% or more girls in the sex industry were sexually abused before they got into the industry–probably by a father or boyfriend.

    Whatever the case, these girls are victims of a torturous industry. They are used, abused, beaten and mentally destroyed. It is very possible that this girl was forced into the trade, becoming a part of the sex slave trade. She was supposedly 18, according to her Facebook profile. That’s pretty young and this is certainly possible. Even if she and other girls aren’t kidnapped into the industry, though, none of them truly want to be in it, selling their bodies away to the highest bidders.

    She didn’t know how truly beautiful she was. This girl was perfectly created, exactly the way God wanted her to be. He values and loves that girl so much and she doesn’t even know. She does not know that He loves her so much He sacrificed His Son for her.

    The sex industry is a monster. It distorts our idea of what love is and how we should search for it. We think that if we make ourselves sexually attractive for the one that we love and that if we give ourselves up that he/she will finally love us the way we so desire to feel loved. So often we forget that love is a bond and an outward action of living for others, caring for them even more than we care for ourselves.

    Guys, are you taking in your relationships or are you giving? If you love her, it’s not about getting anything back, it’s simply about devoting your life to her safety, well-being and happiness. We are supposed to love our ladies just like Christ loved the Church–totally devoting our lives to to their well-being. And isn’t this how we strive to live for Christ too? When we learn to love our wives like we should, that also should be a reflection on how we love God and devote our lives to following Him.

    Girls, you don’t have to be directly involved in the sex industry to struggle with the same common things! Girls, you are so beautiful and worth so much. Self-worth doesn’t come within you but from outside of you. And who is more qualified to determine your worth than the One who created you and knows everything about you? God knows you better than even you do and He has a perfect perspective of you and the world. You are worth a lot to Him, so much so that He traded His Son for you. God became one of His own creations, took the role of a servant and sacrificed everything for you. Align your self-percieved worth with that of God’s. Your true worth comes from God; if you derive your worth from your own feelings and perceptions then you are creating for yourself a false perception of your worth. This is false worth, not true worth. It is a lie. Don’t let anyone (including yourself) determine your worth other than God. Someone who is worth as much as you deserves true love from a guy. Don’t settle for less and go looking for superficial love. Don’t settle for someone who does not truly love you or recognize how beautiful you are and how much you are truly worth.

    Would you join me and fight against the wave of lies about love, romance, and worth that we are constantly bombarded with in our society? It casts a veil over our lives and blinds us from the way things really are. We might not know it but it affects us all. If we took some time to think about it, I think we’d realize that, perhaps, we’ve bought into some of these lies ourselves. When we begin to see this truth, how could we not share with others? We should be uplifting our friends and letting them know just how much they are worth and how much God loves them and what true love really is. What if we prayed? God is incredible and with Him on our side anything can happen. It might seem impossible but I think through prayer and action, we could have a truly positive impact on our friends and our surrounding community. Maybe we could even play a part in ending the sex industry as we know it today. Lets let them know how beautiful and valuable they are. Lets stop casting our pearls before swine!

     

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