The Fire of God

Thoughts to reflect and meditate on:

Living Sacrifice – God’s gift to us through Jesus

Living Sacrifice – our gift back to God of ourselves – the good & bad

Consuming Fire – burns up the impurities, our fleshly nature

Fire of God – his Holy Spirit will fall fresh on us, empowering us to go higher & deeper with Him

Fan the flames – give yourself continually to God to keep your flames fanned, being hot for God – both panting for him (hungry and thirsting) and on fire for him - so that all can feel his power in us (the heat of God and the heart of God) as we pass by or touch them

How to do this, to visualize his work in us:

Welcome the consuming fire of God to set aflame and burn up all that is worthless in us.

Give all your “stuff” – worthless, as straw – all your hindrances, your issues, your frustrations, your tolerances, your junk – to God to burn up on the altar – as you pour yourself out as a living sacrifice on God’s altar.

Submit to his consuming and refining fire. Watch the fire burn. Let God burn everything away in your life that stands in the way of him working in you as he wills. Through your willfulness, your pride, your stubbornness, your disobedience, your wanting to lead, to do, to run ahead of God, your desire to be right, to be perfect, to want to do things your way, to not listen, to not submit to the authorities around you – your husband, the IRS, the laws of the land, your parents, your pastor, your bosses, and others in authority positions.

Your dishonesty, your unwillingness to submit, has not been fooling anyone but yourself. Give it up. Come naked before God. Be vulnerable before him, open and honest.

As the sweet Holy Spirit shines his flashlight of love in you, he will bring to light all the dark corners of your heart and life. Let him disinfect the dark places in your heart. Let him purify you. He will give you his sweet fragrance to replace the stench of your past, the things you have been grasping and clutching for so long. Let him loosen your fingers from the things that you hold and that hold you. Release them all. Let them go. Let them slip away forever. They are forever burnt up in his fire of love and can never return.

Let God put his own love in your heart. Let him make you transparent, so all can see the great love of God in you and want it for themselves.

Put everything on the altar to burn up – one thing at a time: excuses, money, selfishness, your own agenda, dreams, desires, ministries, and your whole heart. Let him cauterize and tenderize your heart. Let him even burn it up and replace it with His great heart of Love.

Watch the flames burn up your offerings on the altar. They are no more. They are gone forever. God has taken them away. When the fire is gone, only ashes remain.

As you watch it all being burned up, all being consumed by a righteous and holy God, let his burning work in your heart. Let his fire consume all of you. Let your tears flow. Let him do as he wills with you. Be a rag doll. Let him burn the stiffness out of you, the hackles in you that have always been raised when you were not getting your way, when someone squashed you, or trampled over the rights you thought were yours.

This will take some time. So just be still and watch God at work. Feel his presence. Tell him what you’re willing to relinquish to him – all your dreams, no matter how noble. All your hopes and desires. All the promises you believed he made you that have not yet been fulfilled. Watch it all burn up. Wait for his still small voice to emerge from the wisps of smoke and ashes.

Look in the ashes as the wind blows them away and see what is left. You are coming out of the fire as gold, something very valuable, transformed and formed by God’s own fire and power. You are becoming a beautiful creation, a very special piece of art that God is molding one piece at a time into pure gold that shines and glitters before Him and before men. All will see the work in you and give God the glory. This is not work you can do yourself. It is only work that can be completed and beautified by allowing yourself to be thrown on the altar of God and be transformed, changed by the Master Craftsman, the Great Artisan and Creator of your life.

God will replace the consuming fire with his fire within – with the Holy Spirit, with the power to do great things in his name – with the power of Love – and the connection with Him flowing right through you, as you now have a clear unblocked conduit, through your life – to allow him to flow freely in you and through you – out of you onto everyone who passes by your way. All will sense God and be touched by his presence in your life.

Give yourself as a present to God. He gives you back his presence that stays with you always. His presence with you is a fragrance to the world around you. They smell the sweet presence of God everywhere you go. To some it is a stench that overwhelms them, because of their resistance to the Gospel and things of God. So they will have a strong reaction against you. Don’t worry about that. God will remove the foolish by the doings of their own hand; or He will draw them back to himself, even through the testimony of your life. To others, especially those seeking more of God, the fragrance of God will be a powerful elixir drawing them to him – desiring to be drunk with the presence and love of God.

Now arise and go forth – out into the world God brings you to.

Continue to watch God at work. He’ll be doing amazing things in those around you, as his sweet breath breathes on them, whispers in their ear, touches their heart with his great Love flowing through you.

And He’ll be doing amazing things in you, as you seek his face, as you hunger and thirst more for him. You will long more to be in his presence just to be with him, to know him more, to have more of him filling you up. Each time he will bring more things to your mind to give to him, to be burned up on the altar. Each time he will set you freer inside. There will be less and less of you and your desires burning and more space for God to fill up your emptied vessel with himself. And his desires will become your true desires.

See what God is leaving in the ashes each time you come to him to have more of the flesh and your selfishness and pride burned out of you. You will have more and more gold he can fashion into a vessel of great beauty. You will reflect more of the Master’s artistry of love on earth. And this great work of His is all that will last through eternity.

May it be so in your life today and always.

Commit your way to him. Trust in him and he will bring it to pass.

For we are his workmanship, created to do good things in Christ Jesus our Lord.