Family camp 2021 youth lesson for Day 1: Spiritual fervor

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” – Romans 12:11-12 (NIV)

 

A series of devastating events emotionally pummeled Trina Eia and her young family the first week of November 2018, leaving the then-36-year-old mother of four struggling to regain her composure.

A Nov. 5 X-ray discovered a 6-centimeter mass in the Paxtonville woman’s chest near her esophagus/trachea/heart region.

A follow-up CT scan on Nov. 8 revealed a 3-centimeter mass in her lower right lung.

“That first week was especially brutal. My grandmother, who I was really close to, passed away the Sunday before my masses were discovered. The whole time at her funeral, I kept thinking, ‘Am I going to be next?’” said Eia in an early 2019 newspaper interview. “I had a hard time sleeping and would wake up crying. I couldn’t think about my awesome husband or wonderful children without bawling. I even recorded a message to be played at my funeral.”

A Nov. 14 bronchoscopy lead to news that she did, indeed, have cancer. On Dec. 6, she met with a team of doctors who shared that her cancer was Stage 3 mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the lung, an extremely rare form of cancer.

“Mucoepidermoid carcinoma is usually associated with the salivary gland, and even then, it is considered rare,” said Dr. Rajiv Panikkar, chair of the cancer institute at Geisinger Medical Center. “Only about 6 to 8 percent of people who have cancer of the head, neck or throat have mucoepidermoid carcinoma, and it is much more rare for it to show up in the lung.”

The prognosis was grim – she was only given a short amount of time to live by medical professionals involved in the case. Instead of letting their timeline dictate her next moves, Trina instead doubled-down on her faith in God.

“One day in the shower, I felt the overwhelming love of God. I did not know if I would live or die, but I did know at that moment that Jesus Christ loved me very deeply,” she said. “Since then, my emotions are a whole lot better. I just keep thinking of how I can best glorify God through this process.”

Check out Trina’s testimony via a video shot just before she passed away a few months ago:

Via a number of studies about faith, statistics show that teens that grew up in the church, from children’s ministry through youth group, find it increasingly hard to “stay hot” for God.

This increasingly “lukewarm” approach to God is troubling for many reasons, specifically because God calls out that sort of faith via letters to various churches he has John write in Revelation. Specifically from Revelation 3:15-16 (NIV):

15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

God doesn’t mince words when it comes to His desire that His followers stay hot in their faith … as our main verse for this week reminds us, we are to “never be lacking in zeal” and we are to “keep our spiritual fervor.”

The word “zeal” means to have excessive excitement for a person, cause or object – in this case, our faith in God. Meanwhile, the word “fervor” means having an intensity of feeling or expression. In other words, God wants us to never be lacking in our excessive excitement for Him, and we should maintain our spiritual intensity.

However, that can be difficult. In the studies mentioned earlier, people who grew up in the church report fairly consistently that they found it easy to excitedly follow God as children, but that became increasingly hard to do as they got older.

Why do you think that is?

For some, “life” gets in the way. They are sidetracked by tragedy or worldly temptations. Slowly, over time, the pot of water that was boiling over in intensity has cooled, the water becoming lukewarm.

For a pot of water to cool, it has to be taken off the heat. If you remove a burning log from a campfire and place it away from the fire ring, it usually loses its flame, it cools. Put that same log back in the fire, and it will usually burst back into flames.

What does this mean for us?

If we feel ourselves cooling in our faith, perhaps it is because we have removed ourselves from the spiritual routine that provides God’s “heat” in our lives. Sometime, we inadvertently trigger our own lukewarm faith by neglecting to spend regular time reading God’s word, praying earnestly to Him, attending youth group and church services and being in fellowship with other believers who we know are genuinely following God’s lead in their lives.

Yes, that process is hard to maintain when you have so many other distractions in life. Driving, jobs, relationships, etc., can easily cut into our “God” time and trigger a “cool down” in our faith.

Another way to look at this is via Jesus’ parable involving the sower planting seeds. From Matthew 13:3-8 (NIV):

… “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop — a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

If we want God’s seeds of faith to truly sprout within us, we must prepare ourselves to be the best “soil” possible. Like a fire-building competition, those who typically win are those who develop a foundation that allows a steady burn. Building a fire with a big ball of kindling and no thicker pieces usually leads to an early, bright fire that burns out quickly. Building a fire with just thicker pieces of wood goes out too quickly. Success is found in fire-building balance, and spiritual success is found in the balance we mindfully build into our lives where God remains a priority.

Earlier, we shared the story of Trina Eia, who was faced with a dire diagnosis in early November of 2018, told she likely only had a few weeks to live, but decided she was purposefully going to focus on God despite the many trials she was going to face in treatments and recoveries and countless trips back and forth to hospitals and doctor appointments.

Trina’s dedication to God inspired many people in the local community to re-ignite their own faith, even in the midst of dark times. Meanwhile, God allowed Trina to beat countless “timelines” suggested by medical professionals of when they expected her to pass away from her cancer. She ultimately graduated into Heaven a few months ago – April 18, 2021 – years after her initial diagnosis.

In our main verse for today, after we are instructed to not lack in our zeal for God, and to maintain our spiritual fervor for him, Paul conveniently provides some immediate suggestions on how to achieve this goal.

First, in the same breath of suggesting we not lack in zeal and keep up our spiritual fervor, he suggests we should do so by “serving the Lord.” Serving the Lord can be done in many different ways, and we will look at some later this week.

Paul also suggests that we should “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Interesting advice that Trina Eia and her family took to heart during their ordeal. Those that knew her well can testify to her joyful demeanor of hope despite her numerous trials, how she attempted to stay patient throughout her affliction and how the family stayed faithful in prayer.

What are some ways you can incorporate these elements into your daily routine?

A number of years ago, I (John Zaktansky) went through an especially rough patch. I ultimately started seeing a counselor who suggested that sometimes, we just need to force ourselves to stop thinking about the tough situation we are going through. We mindfully push it out of our thought process and focus instead on something else.

At first, I thought the suggestion was silly. How could I just choose to stop thinking about a pain I felt completely consumed by? However, with practice, it actually worked. I would feel myself spiraling into negative thoughts, and would purposefully switch gears. Many times, it was to prayer and reading the Bible. Other times, I fired up the Wii and played a few games of Madden football, went on a hike, went fishing, hung out with encouraging friends or found other ways to stop dwelling in the negative.

When it comes to our spiritual fervor, we have a similar choice. In the midst of a major life storm, we can choose to keep our faith kindled brightly for God. A good example of that is the testimony of new contemporary Christian singer Anne Wilson, who was 16 when her brother died unexpectedly.

Instead of letting it overwhelm and consume her, she instead chose to turn to God, and in the midst of that tragedy, found a new calling from God. Check out her inspiring testimony in this video:

She tells her story, as well, through her first song video:

Ultimately, where does your personal relationship with God rate on the scale of cold to lukewarm to scalding hot? What are some ways you can mindfully turn up the heat on your spiritual walk and reignite the passion to completely follow Him?

This week, we will be focused on that process through the lens of several other concepts provided in Romans chapter 12. Serving God by serving others, discovering and honing our God-given talents, improving how we deal with people we really don’t like and ultimately transforming our lives into living sacrifices for Him.