Burn, baby, burn are words found in songs from the gospel group MercyMe to the disco group The Trammps. The version by The Residents starts with, “I’m gonna die with no tears in my eyes…”
What these songs are telling us is that no one’s life is going to be perfect. There are times we’ll stumble, and temptation will lead us astray. People will try to pull us down. We’ll be forced to choose between right and wrong, between what the Bible teaches and what appeals to our carnal man.
The choices we make will either lead us towards Christ or towards the world.
Fiber optics are an excellent way to illustrate how easily our choices lead us in one direction or another. Fiber optics carry incredible amounts of information in beams of light. One trick that can be done with fiber optics is to split the information stream with a prism. Light hits the prism, and it splits it into two streams, one going left, and the other going right.
Two choices. Two paths. For the Christian, one information stream leads to Christ, and the other toward the world. We have to choose which one we will follow.
Colossians 1:20 tells us to make “peace by the blood of his cross.”
Acts 2:38 requires us to “repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Christ in his loving mercy gives us a choice, although gives is perhaps too kind a word. We are forced to choose which way we will go in life. Christ only promises to stand beside us as we walk through the fire.
1 John 1:9 tells us our first step. It’s the prism that splits the Christian from the sinner, dividing the one who chooses to walk through the fire to find salvation, from the one who chooses to remain in the fires of selfishness and sin.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Of course, that’s just the first step, but if we want to “die with no tears in our eyes,” we have to hold to Jesus, study the Word, and spend time with him in prayer.
When we dedicate our lives to Christ, we’ll come through to the other side, and it’s the devil who’ll burn, baby, burn.
Jesus is the light stream that carries us to heaven and beyond.
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Code: FGO.H.18.15.vp.esv