Return to your 'burning bush' experience

CORPUS CHRISTI?Until pastors return to their personal "burning bush" experience, the fire of faith that fueled their calling and their ministries will fade and their influence will be marginalized, Jimmy Pritchard told those gathered to hear the convention sermon on Nov. 16.

Pritchard, pastor of First Baptist Church of Forney, reminded the audience that Moses' burning bush experience never left him but remained the defining point of his life.

"That bush is still burning," he told pastors.

In Exodus 3:1-5, Moses saw the bush was on fire but not consumed. Pritchard said a pastor's burning bush experience is the moment when he felt the most compelling call to ministry. They must return to it time and again to "let that fire get back into your bones."

"Moses was in it for the long haul," he said.

God's call to the leader of the Hebrews inaugurated a 40-year ministry that was not all glory. Pritchard noted that Moses dealt with incredible trials and rebellion including the betrayal of his own brother and sister.

"Longevity has its blessings. What Moses had going for him was he would go back to that burning bush."

That experience, Pritchard said, gave Moses the faith and ability to fulfill the call on his life.

His experience at the burning bush empowered Moses' message. The people would listen because they knew he was bringing them a word from God.

"Slogan after slogan after slogan won't get it done." But the Word of God brings real change.

He cited the role of pastors and their sermons in the years preceding the American Revolution. Pastors were using Scripture to proclaim such ideas as "taxation without representation is tyranny" and other tenets that ultimately made their way into the Declaration of Independence.

He asked, "Today, what is coming from our pulpits?"

The church needs to preach the exclusivity of Christ for salvation and take a stand, based on the authority of Scripture, on issues the Bible speaks to.

Pritchard said Moses' burning bush experience also empowered his manhood. Because he had stood on holy ground Moses was considered a holy man. But holiness, Pritchard said, does not come simply from the lack of wickedness or the spiritual experience. It is being set apart by God and for God.

Pritchard lamented that Christians are not living a distinctively different life from the rest of the world. Too often pastors have walked away from their burning bush and allowed their passions to cool and their godly influence to be reduced to dying embers, he said.

By returning to the burning bush and stoking the embers, pastors can rekindle their passion for the gospel and extend the ministry God has called them to fulfill, he said.