Michael Njiru

>> Coming up next with on Power for Living with Bishop Dale C. Bronner... >> It is a sign that I am connected with God. I'm just telling you. That's why when you've been but God, I mean God is a moving thing. And look, when you start praying, it's hard to pray and feel God moving and then you just stayed still. You begin to pray and you begin to rock and you go this way and that way and this way and that way because God is a moving thing and when you get in touch with God it becomes a tandem kind of a dance because the Spirit is moving this way. Every time I feel the Spirit moving, I will pray. And when you get connected this becomes a synchronized dance with God where He starts moving with His people. >> ♪ Hey Power for living Power for living. ♪ >> The life that you live is the legacy that you leave. Legacy is really not about the past. Legacy is about the future. Legacy is about what you set in motion. It is about what you give birth to. You have to produce something in your life that will ultimately become your legacy long after you're gone. So start that thing in motion today. Get started right now. >> I want to talk today for just a few moments from the subject, "Keepers of the Flame." Keepers of the flame, keepers of the flame. Instead of the word kindle here in many other versions, it uses the expression "Fan into flames." Fan into flames, fan into flames. So when you kindle something you fan into flames that particular thing. Parents have this uncanny ability of whatever you see positive in your children. Whatever you see that is lofty, that is good, that is in line with the destiny of who God has made them to be. You need to fan it into flames. Do you know what fanning does? Fanning gives oxygen to a thing, and fire needs oxygen in order to thrive. And the more oxygen that you give fire, the more that it thrives. So if you see something positive in a person, give oxygen to it. Don't ever have a positive thought in you concerning somebody around you and failed to share it. If God gives you a positive impulse to share with somebody that is designed to be an encouragement to them, it is not designed to be held. Don't just think in your mind, "Oh, this person is doing a nice job." Voice it. Because people are so quick to voice criticism and you never do know when you have worked in a place, can you imagine if on your work in your workspace, on your job, if people took the time to compliment you, when you're doing something positive? Why don't we, instead of the boss coming and catching us doing something wrong, why don't we catch people doing something right and celebrate it? It's like, "Oh my God, you're here on time again today," and celebrate it. Celebrate it, because whatever you celebrate, you get more off. Whatever you celebrate, you get more off. Catch people doing right and celebrate it. Give oxygen to it, kindle the flame. You get more of it. Do you know when people don't look like anything, and then when they find a dress up and look really nice? Fan the flame, fan the flame. "Oh my, ooh. Oh, Miss. Fang must've found somebody. Oh." Fan the flame. Put encouragement, give oxygen to it, give oxygen to and fan it into flame. We are keepers of the flame. We're letting too many fires go out. People start off on far for Jesus, and then you see them weeks down the road, months down the road, years down the road, and you wonder, "My God, what happened? What happened? What happened? What happened?" When Jesus appeared to me, November the 18th, 1976, it changed my life forever. I was filled with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. You may not know it, but November the 18th, 1976 was a Thursday and Jesus stepped into my bedroom. It changed my life forever. And let me just say this to you, the flame has never gone out. The flame has never gone out. He set a fire in me. He baptized me with the Holy Ghost and with fire, fire, fire. The fire has never gone out and that's why I'm talking about keepers of the flame because I know some folks that started off running this race. The Apostle Paul writing to the church at Galatia, he said, "You did run well. Who did hinder you?" Is always a who. If a person fire gets put out, it's not a what is a who. Somebody that they were running were put the fire out. You got to have people around you that know how to fan your flame. Are you listening? You got to have somebody around you that keeps your flame lit. You find two people that they start all off in love, but they just look at each other on Google out and you didn't tell when people in love. They just get on the phone and they're just, "You just hang on the phone." Just nobody is saying anything. They just hang in. [LAUGHTER] "No, you say goodbye first." No, you say it." And then once they've been married sometime they're like, "You finished." [LAUGHTER] Got up and hang up. But the word kindle, the word kindle refers to igniting and feeding a fire. When you say kindle, it means igniting and feeding, igniting and feeding of fire, igniting it and feeding it. You have to feed it. Whatever you ignite, you have to feed if you want to keep it alive. Now listen to continue to burn a fire needs a few things. A fire needs heat, a fire needs fuel, and a fire needs oxygen in order to continue to burn. That's what a fire needs. It needs heat, a source of heat, and that's why if you want to put a fire out that you use water because that extinguishes the heat, so if it loses its heat, the fire goes out. It needs fuel, it needs something that fuels it, and it needs oxygen in order to live. Now, to extinguish a fire, there must be three things. There must be cooling, cooling. And that's why cooling is just the removal of the heat source. That's what water does. Secondly, if you want to extinguish a fire, smothering. Smothering reduces the percentage of oxygen through blanketing the thing. If a fire breaks out in the kitchen, if you can blanket, you can throw a blanket on it, smother it. If you got a grease fire, throw flour on it. It'll smother it. You have to smother it or that you can use foam. It smothers. Do you want to put a fire out? Smothers. And this is why when you're trying to blossom, somebody, you can't smother them. You'll put that fire out when you were just smothering and always breathing down their neck it's your way of saying, "I don't trust you." And you'll put their fire out. And then the third thing is starvation. Starvation. Starvation is removal of fuel or the combustible material. So you can starve a fire if you remove the wood. You know in amount [INAUDIBLE] think about a wood burning stove. If you remove the wood, you see you start the fire and eventually it will go out. If you remove the coal from the grill you'll starve the fire. So then must be cooling, smothering or starvation in order to extinguish a fire. So don't let people cool you off. "It's like, Chow you're too excited about this Jesus thing." Don't let people cool your fire off and smother you with all kinds of carnality and then starve you because they remove you away from your spiritual life force. That's why you need to be plugged into ministry. You need to be a part of a small group. That's why we come and assemble in the house of the Lord because this gives you fuel to keep your fire lit it and keep it burning strongly. And just think about it. Now, light in the Biblical times was never ever from an electrical source, but light always came from far, whether it was from the sun or whether it was from fire that was in a lantern. None of the fire in Biblical times was ever from that. And let me say this to you. You ought to be able to change your life not because you feel the heat, but because you see the light. And there are some hard-headed folks that won't change until they feel the heat. If you wait until you feel the heat, you know you've gone over time. Why don't you change when you see the light, once you see the light of what you need to do better? Change when you see the light, don't wait until you feel the heat. If you wait you feel the heat you're in trouble. The government is on you now. When you feel the heat, oh, you in debt. By the time you feel the heat, the marriage is in trouble. Change when you see the light when you see the light. Don't wait until you feel the heat. But see, in the days of old, in the days of old, all of their light sources came from fire. That's why you don't let people put your fire out at nighttime. God, at nighttime, He was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to give them vision in dark situations. You need a fire at nighttime. At every night season of your life, you need a fire. And this is why we are keepers of the flame. We're keepers of the flame. I was recently using a demonstration, I think when I was in Paris that recently, and I was using a demonstration with fire. And they had an exhaust that was blowing on the stage. And the thing kept blowing the flame out. I couldn't like the thing, but it kept blowing the flame out. And I'm like, "I hadn't banked on that. I hadn't banked on the environment with it blowing there." Sometimes I have to get smart. I was in Fiji one time ministering, and they had a big strong fan on me and I had my Bible. This was before the days of technology and iPads and stuff, and all of the pages of my Bible were just flipping. [LAUGHTER] Just go onto the fans, but when I went back, I went back with an iPad. I said, "Flip this." [LAUGHTER] But when you have a flame you have to become a keeper of the flame, and so because I was doing a demonstration with fire, I had to cup to try to shield my flame from the wind. And think of your children as a flame, and you have to shield them from the when negative stuff coming out of other folks' mouths, judging them, talking about stuff that they don't know anything about. Trying to put them down, trying to compare them with other people. Shield them from the wind, keep their flame. We're keepers of the flame. When you have a torch, wind, strong wind can blow it out. See, that's the difference between wind and oxygen. There's a difference. I mean oxygen is in the wind, but a strong wind just by itself can extinguish a flame. And Jesus said, "Let your light so shine." And he wasn't talking about light that comes from electricity. And when He was here, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." But when He got ready to leave, He was saying, "Ye are the light up the world." And our light is not from an electrical source. And that's why even when the world when the world loses electricity, they lose electricity, but the people of God never lose power. Because our light comes from a power of the light of God who is a consuming fire on the inside of us that has nothing to do with electricity. And that's why you can be in a distant place and God's light can still shine in you and through you in the deepest, darkest jungle of the world because electricity is not the source of our power. Our power is rooted in God and there's a dark, cold world out there, and there are so many things that are out here now with a tsunami waiting to hit your flame and put it out. And I just want you to think of yourself like a candle walking through a dark place. And then there are breezes that are threatening your flame because that's what we are. You're walking and if the lights have gone out and you've lit a candle and now you're walking in the darkness of that house, you want to be a keeper of the flame. Because if this blows out, I can't even see where my matches are. And so I'm just trying to keep the flame. I'm just trying to keep the flame and this is what we are. We're a light in a dark world and you've got to have something around you. Your prayer life as a part of your shield that helps you to keep your flame, you see? Because, you know, prayer is like an incense. It has to be ignited and a smoke goes up. Prayer is like a fire source that goes up toward heaven. So even when stuff is trying to put your fire out, you got to keep your life connected to prayer because prayer is the thing that keeps us connected to God who is a consuming fire. It is our connection. And so when you get close enough to it, I don't know whether you ever -- when I was a little boy I had a magnifying glass, and I'd go out and at sometimes take my magnifying glass and I'd put it up against the leaf and I would watch until that thing started smoking. And then I'd watch it burn a hole in the leaf, and I just wrote a whole lot of stuff. [LAUGHTER] But it just fascinated me to see what the power of focus light fire from a distance. It is amazing that I took fire from the sky and brought it to the earth by a looking glass, and it magnifies something on a surface and the only thing that gave me a signal that it was working is that I saw it smoking. And when you are connected to God and the incense of your prayer coming up, it is a sign. [APPLAUSE] It is a sign that I am connected with God. I'm just telling you. That's why when you've been but God, I mean God is a moving thing. And look, when you start praying, it's hard to pray and feel God moving and then you just stayed still. You begin to pray and you begin to rock and you go this way and that way and this way and that way because God is a moving thing and when you get in touch with God it becomes an [INAUDIBLE] kind of a dance because the Spirit is moving this way. Every time I feel the Spirit moving, I will pray. And when you get connected this becomes a synchronized dance with God when He starts moving with His people, and it blesses us. So I want to ask you, what did you have that needs kindling in your life? What do you have that needs kindling and your life? You know, with Moses and the children of Israel, fire was a symbol of God's presence with them. What do you have that needs kindling in your life? You may have a spark and now you need to fan it into a flame. You may have a spark, but it needs to be fanned into a flame. Paul reminded young Timothy, 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul says, "Timothy, what you have received from me, commit to other faithful people who shall be able to teach others also. He says, "Timothy, what you've received from me, Paul, I want you to give it to other folks." In other words, the very person who lit the wick on your life. And I don't know whether you know the word wick. Do you know what the word means? Twisted. That's why anything that is wicked is twisted. But it is something that is twisted, that God sets a fire on. Fire goes on the twisted and God can take something twisted in your life and turn it into a light by setting a fire on it through the twisted thing. He doesn't unravel it's still twisted, but he sets a fire on it and sanctifies it and lets a godly purpose come out. And so I want you to think of it this way. The Bible says in Proverbs 20:27, that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly. It is likening man's spirit onto a candle so that when God sits on the wick up a candle that is in us, you use that candle to light other candles and it never reduces your light, but you multiply the light. And even though we are keepers of the flame, it's not designed to stay with you. Lend your flame to other people. Just lean over and touch them with your flame and you give them something without diminishing yourself. It's the way that you multiply. You share your knowledge, you share your relationship with God. You share your testimony, share your faith. Share your enthusiasm for the things of God. Share your passion. Share your wisdom. It is the way to multiply what God has done in your life, in the lives of others around you. You start with your family and you deal with your neighbors, your co-workers, every place you go, you need to think of which opportunity am I taking this week to share my fire? Don't keep your fire to yourself. That's why the world is so cold because everybody wants to keep their fire to themselves. It's not designed for that. It's designed to give the fire away. It's designed so that you share it so that you warm the world up, that you warm the world up. And just think that every thought, every idea is a spark. You can be at home in the middle of the night and all of a sudden an idea comes to you as something that you can do as a spark. Fan it into flame, fan it into flame, fan it into flame. Every message that I delivered to you starts with a spark of an idea. It's a spark, it's a spark, a spark. When I was germinating this word, just the word fire came up in my spirit. Fire, fire. And I said, "Fire." The message was birthed out of a fall, out of an idea, just one thought, fire, fire. Our God is a consuming fire. And see, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, left the Orthodox Church that was cold and went out into the wilderness and started preaching, and he started drawing bigger crowds out in the wilderness than the folks in the big cathedrals. And they came out to see him one day and they said, "What in the world is your secret, John Wesley?" And John Wesley said, "John Wesley's set himself on fire, and people come to see him burn." Do you want to see somebody who's on fire? And listen, here's the deal. In order to set somebody else on fire, you got to be on fire yourself. You got to be on fire yourself. You got to be on fire yourself. You got to come alive. You can't make somebody else enthusiastic, enthusiastic, and you don't have any enthusiasm. You can only give what you've got. So if you're going to somebody else on fire, you got to be on fire yourself. That's just the way that it works. It's just the way that it works. You often feel tired not because you've done too much, but because hear me carefully, because you have done too little of what sparks are firing you. Let me say that again. You often feel tired not because you have done too much, but because you have done too little of what sparks are firing you. You often feel tired not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks fire in you. There a lot of parts and elements of jobs that don't spark a fire in you. You got to do it because it goes with the territory, but it doesn't spark a fire and you can wear yourself out and burnout because you're doing stuff that doesn't spark a fire in you and you have to always keep yourself connected to things that spark a fire in you. If it's helping people the sparks are firing. If it's teaching others, the sparks are firing you. If it's making a difference in the lives of others, is sparking a fire in you. Some people you know, the thing that sparks a fire in them is cooking and watching people eat, and I'd like to be connected because I'm on the receiving end you know. [LAUGHTER] My wife accuses me of eating all the time, and my response to that is, "You've got to eat." [LAUGHTER] "You've got to eat. You've got to eat." And so I want to tell you, guard your thoughts because they shape your future. Guard your thoughts because they shape your future. Guard your thoughts. A thought is a flame. It's an idea, it's a spark that turns into a flame that can become a huge fire. Guard your thoughts because they shape your future, your thoughts shape your future. In a [INAUDIBLE] that has built a big future, it all started with a spark of a thought, the spark of an idea, the spark of a dream. And the moment you get fire going, somebody's going to come to try to put it out. And you know some of these people, they don't mean to be negative. They call themselves, giving you a reality check, but what they're really doing is raining on your flame. And just remember this, that people who have given up on their dream want to talk you out of yours. But the thing that I want you to realize is this, is that dreams don't come out of reason. They come out of imagination. Dreams don't come out of reason. They come out of imagination. My question to you is, who lights your fire and fans your flame? Who lights your fire and fans your flame? You've got to keep those people close to you. Who lights your fire? There are certain people that light your fire, they light your fire, and so when you find people that light your fire and fan your flame, keep them close. I met the first lady of back in 1978. She lit my fire, fan my flame. [APPLAUSE] You got to find somebody that lights your fire and fans your flame because you've got a fire in you. There's a flame of God that is alive in your life that is designed to burn and to be shared with other people. Don't just come here to Word of Faith and you just enjoy and say, "You know what? I've got a great church." Share the flame. Share the flame. Share the flame. It's a dark cold world out there. Share the flame, share the flame, share the flame. You know, ask God to use you. You're an enthusiastic person, light somebody else's fire this week. Somebody's fire has gone out. Somebody's wood is wet and they need your flame to touch their life. Sometime it's the flame of love because they're so isolated. More people die of loneliness than they do have disease, and sometimes they just need somebody to reach out. You'd be surprised how it warms an older person's heart just for somebody who cares about them, to just reach out and pick up the telephone or to drop bar and bring some pie. You know, my younger brother taught me. He said, "It's impossible to eat ice cream and be depressed." [LAUGHTER] Do you know somebody's depressed? Get some ice cream and just drop by the house and just share it with them. You cannot eat ice cream and be depressed, not good ice cream. [LAUGHTER] Share the share the flame. Share the flame. There's a fire of God in your heart. It's not designed just for you, and you can't just assume that just because I'm on fire for the things of God then everybody else is. Share the flame. You're keepers of the flame. Keepers of the flame. And remember it is amazing that God allows you to lean your flame without ever giving your flame. It never puts your fire out to light somebody else's wick. And somebody can come alive because they meet you and they hear your story and they see God's grace and favor on your life, and they become ignited. Their flame can be kindled, can be ignited and fanned into flame and it can grow into something that can become a great blessing. You're keepers of the flame, and you're going to have to give account to God as to what you did with the fire that God gave you. It's designed to be spread, it's designed to be spread. You remember Samson in scripture? He took foxes and tied their tails together and set them on fire and sit that far all over the place and it burned down so much stuff. We ought to start doing that with the fire that God gives us and take it and light stuff and release it until we create a conflagration for the Holy Spirit so that revival fires are once again burning. It only takes a spark to get a fire going and once the fire is going, once it is kindled, we have to feed it. We feed it and we release it and let that thing go into the world. >>Thank you for watching Power for Living with Bishop Dale C. Bronner. If you would like to order this message in its entirety, call us at 888-D-R-D-A-L-E-1, or go to www.dalebronner.com. If you're ever in the Atlanta area, we invite you to join us live for one of our Sunday morning or Thursday night services. We pray that this message has encouraged, equipped and empowered you to live a more victorious life. Join us next time for Power for Living with Bishop Dale C. Bronner, where revelation is power, Power for Living. >>♪ Power for living Power for living. ♪