Keep Burning Part 1 by Rev. Christie Bature: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Don't Let Anyone Determine Whether You Keep Burning

There will always be voices out there — faceless critics hiding behind fake names, people who take a two-minute clip and build a whole narrative of insult around it. Even Jesus, "King of kings, Lord of lords," was accused of casting out demons by the power of the devil. Don't leave the outcome of your fire in the hands of another person. When Samuel anointed Saul, some soldiers followed him because God had touched their hearts; others despised him outright, saying, "How shall this man save us?" Saul's response is the model — he simply held his peace. People who go out of their way to wound you: hold your peace. That's how you keep burning. Otherwise, they'll put out your fire for you.

The Mind Is the Real Battlefield

The devil works like a scratched record, replaying the same painful track — trauma, shame, anger, guilt, fear, disappointment, betrayal, abuse — over and over until you settle in and live there. Be careful what you sit with. Romans 12:11 — "not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord." Leviticus 6:13 — "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out." This is not a suggestion — it is a divine instruction.

Decide Who You Are

You have to settle, deliberately, whether you're chasing the things of the world or the things of the Spirit — you can't fully chase both. But chasing the things of the Spirit will, as a promise, still give birth to the things of the world in due time. It's entirely possible to be excellent in your field — the head of a bank, a conglomerate, dressed impeccably — and still carry nothing of eternal weight if there's nothing spiritual anchoring it. None of what the world offers travels with you. What matters is what you're actually chasing, and why.

A Story That Reshaped an Entire Perspective

After losing her mother and sister within weeks of each other in 2013, grief nearly overwhelmed her, until a book recounting a woman's visits to heaven brought unexpected comfort — including an account of a mother grieving her young daughter, who discovered, through her daughter's old diary, a dream the child had written years earlier describing heaven exactly as it had been shown to the author. That account described the gold of heaven as so refined it becomes translucent — purer than anything achievable on earth. Everything on earth that we treat as precious is a cheap, tarnished imitation of what's already waiting. That realization reshaped how she saw the people who had wounded her deeply: not by minimizing the pain, but by refusing to spend her limited attention on their earthly value rather than her own eternal one.

Your fire must not go out — it's an instruction, not a suggestion. Spending hours, nights, and weeks marinating in anger is one of the surest ways to let it go out.