I recently cleaned my BBQ (exciting, I know). I took the whole thing apart, cleaning out the burners of all the grease and grime that had dripped over the years, scrubbing off the grates that I had been cooking on for forever with nothing more than a quick surface scraping before cooking again. It was inconvenient, and my initial thought was, “I can probably just keep cooking, and not take all this time to do this? My BBQ is fine!”

“Fine”, one of the most spiritually dangerous words in our language, as it demonstrates a heart in a place of determining for ourselves, “where I’m at is good enough, and I don’t really need to pursue anything more of God.” This is where I was at with my BBQ; I could see there was fire, I could feel some heat, and my food was cooking, so I determined that my BBQ was “fine”, good enough, and without any need for anything more.

On the day I cleaned my BBQ I found all kinds of things that I knew were not good for the BBQ or helping the cooking of my food in any way. It wasn’t necessarily harmful, but it certainly was not what the designer of the BBQ had intended for an optimal cooking experience.

Don’t settle.

Jesus said that what God desires is for us to love and pursue Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. This sounds great, and something we want/intend to do. But over time, the grease and grime of life begin to drip over the burners, the crust of life’s circumstances begins to build up, and we start to justify how we don’t have time to take things apart, to really allow the Holy Spirit to do His work, so we settle for “fine”.

Nowhere in God’s word to us, when God spoke through people, or when God sent His son, does He say, “Settle for what you’ve experienced in the past, accept that the greatness and power of God is only as great and powerful as a worship song or a sermon on Sunday morning. And don’t expect anything more from God than what you could make happen yourself, in case God doesn’t show up.” To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (or as we say around LBF “Passionately Pursue LIFE in Jesus”) means we allow the Holy Spirit to do the work in our heart where we are unwilling to accept anything less than the full glory of God and to take every thought captive to the authority of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5) that would lead us to accept “fine”.

Allow the Holy Spirit to do the work in our heart where we are unwilling to accept anything less than the full glory of God.

When I took my BBQ apart, I found things clogging up the works that I didn’t intend or desire to be there, but I allowed because I was satisfied with “fine”. When those things were cleaned out, and my BBQ was put back together, I was astounded at how differently it cooked! The time, the evenness, the little black lines that appear on a steak, were all so much better, and I realized I had just gotten so used to “fine”, that I was accepting so much less than what the BBQ had to offer.

This requires me to consider how I have done that with God. Church goes well, youth group grows, people seem to enjoy themselves… good enough for me. But what if the Holy Spirit has so much more? My family seems happy, my finances are in order, I have a good job… good enough for me. But what if the Holy Spirit wants to move in power, and in essence, I am telling Him, “I don’t really want to take the BBQ apart; it’s working “Fine”? What would I miss out on??

What if the Holy Spirit has so much more?

I want to invite you to wrestle through what you are accepting in your relationship with God that may be less than what He has for you. In what ways have you settled for “fine” when in reality it is so much less than the LIFE that you could be experiencing. This is not about increasing church attendance, being more generous, or reading your Bible more (Though I believe all of those things are an important part of our faith journey), this is about how we are Passionately pursuing, or sitting back and settling.

Why would I want to settle for a small flame, clogged burners, and a dirty grate to cook my food “fine”, when God has a Holy Spirit fire that is capable of doing the miraculous in and through our lives? Happy Barbecuing!