Fire of Faith

I attended the 2008 Worldwide Leadership Training on Saturday and was intrigued by a quote Elder Oaks made, quoting Elder Ballard:

Clearly, those of us who have been entrusted with precious children have been given a sacred, noble stewardship, for we are the ones God has appointed to encircle today’s children with love and the fire of faith and an understanding of who they are. --"Great Shall Be the Peace of Thy Children," Ensign, April 1994

What caught my attention was the expression"fire of faith." He didn't say spark of faith or smoldering faith or ember of faith, but fire of faith. A raging bonfire of faith that is very hard to extinguish. That particular expression reminded me of a talk President Eyring gave in the 1986 October conference titled "The Spark of Faith". He quotes President J. Reuben Clark:

It is my hope and my belief that the Lord never permits the light of faith wholly to be extinguished in any human heart, however faint the light may glow. The Lord has provided that there shall still be there a spark which, with teaching, with the spirit of righteousness, with love, with tenderness, with example, with living the Gospel, shall brighten and glow again, however darkened the mind may have been. And if we shall fail so to reach those among us of our own whose faith has dwindled low, we shall fail in one of the main things which the Lord expects at our hands. --Conference Report, October 1936

An experience Tyler's Grandma Ellis related to us one time while we were camping at the cabin illustrates this spark of faith concept. She and Grandpa Ellis had come up several weeks before to cut down some diseased trees on their lot. Grandma's job was to burn all the little stuff. They spent the day burning, and at the end of the day extinguished the fire -- or so they thought. The next morning she checked on the ashes and threw some kindling on top. It immediately burst into flames. Even though the fire appeared to be out, there was still that spark waiting to be resurrected.

[Y]ou need to do everything in your power to be absolutely certain that your spiritual bonfire of testimony is burning brightly enough to keep the wolves of darkness away. You can always use more dry kindling. As the Apostle Paul taught, each of us has “come short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23.) None of us has progressed so far in this life that we do not need to continually fortify our testimonies. --Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, "Spiritual Bonfires of Testimony," Ensign, November 1992

I hope that my neighbors and friends and family who cast a glance in my direction know that my fire of faith, my fire of testimony is burning strongly. It's burning brightly. But as Elder Wirthlin stated, I also recognize the need to "fortify [my] testimony" daily.