Have you ever sat quietly in front of a fireplace, a candle or open fire roasting marshmallows while contemplating; Psalm 104:4b “He makes His ministers flames of fire .” (Also, see Hebrews 1:7)
That is God’s open fire potential opinion of us! Are we a steady burning Blue Flame? A fire with Rose glow? A Flying Spark as I am now seeing in my burning fireplace? It only takes a love spark to get a fire going!
I, now, have battery operated candles even flickering ones sitting all around. They are pretty, give nice contained light and safer but it’s NOT a burning flame. As, I pause to gaze upon both, a fake candle sitting nicely on my mantle above a hot burning fireplace, this early Sunday Morn, one reminds me of being lukewarm in fervor to Christ. While the other reminds me of being burning hot flames with sparks for Christ. An Angel warned us in Revelation 3:15-16, not to be lukewarm!
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I am feeling a little like Jacob, I’m going to sit and Fire watch until You bless me God! Hey, what a blessing to learn 😦 being so rigid like my battery candle with no potential to spark is religiosity!
Hah, There seems to be two sides to a fiery story. I just now finished watching a Christian Vid. of a woman who went to hell [NDE], revived and came back to tell about it…..rescued by God Himself. She describes the fires of hell and the human beings screaming in horror, terror and excruciating pain. So as I see it. We have two choices concerning fire! Either we can be blazing hot and burning with zeal for the Lord….as you describe above, Sara. Or…. we can be blazing hot and burning up, over and over eternally as when we make one of the other two choices. We can choose life, ….or Death. Death is the fiery furnace of ignominy, anguish, torture and torment for eternity…..OR…..choose life and the fire of zealousness, ardor and passion…with your coals of fire burning brightly till He comes for us.
” As, I pause to gaze upon both, a fake candle sitting nicely on my mantle above a hot burning fireplace”…’Fake candle’ caught my attention. It is predictable, robotic (on/off timer), won’t burn the house down if left alone, etc…but will never light someone else’s fire because it is not alive.
I read this from Sarah Young’s ‘Jesus Calling’ this pm and thought it related as I think on my own “fire potential”. “…Men tend to multiple duties in their observance of religion. This practice enables them to give Me money, time and work without yielding up to Me what I desire most – their hearts. Rules can be observed mechanically. Once they become habitual they can be followed with minimal effort and almost no thought. These habit- forming rules provide a false sense of security, lulling the soul into a comatose condition.”
I think this is a form of being lukewarm…no fire in this kind of living.
Sarah Young hit this one out of the park! She said it exactly just as an empire gives the home run yell as his arm signal speak louder than his words. “…lulling the soul into a comatose condition.” says, Sarah Young. Fake/false as a light can be. Gives just enought light to keep the light holder’s feet scuffing alone but no ministering to others. God said, I make my servants, “flames of fire.” Home run for Sarah Young and we know she is a flame of fire!
Sara you ask above in your post on “Flames of Fire’: “Are we a steady burning Blue Flame?”
This am I came across this quote by C.S. Lewis in a morning devotional and thought this was a good description of a steady flame:
“The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.”
As 2016 progresses and I am hearing preachers and teachers and ministers of the Word of God bringing forth exhortations to the Body of Christ I am readjusting some of my prayers with my way of thinking about the Kingdom of God in my worship time.
I am awakening to the meaning of the words that Jesus spoke in Luke 7:20, that “the Kingdom of God is within you” referring to the Truth that not only was the “kingdom of God” standing in their midst at at that point in time, but also intimating it would also be within the truly born again disciples of Jesus Christ unto eternity.
I am renewed with a concept of the magnitude of that, within myself anyway, that when I pray…”Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done” I intend….. Oh Lord, that Your Kingdom would not only come forth in the earth…the government of God, in the Body of Christ, but would come forth in me like a fire, the fire of God. That…. because Jesus gave the CHURCH, the Body of Christ of which I am a member…the keys of the Kingdom…I have the powers with those keys by an act of my will to choose good over evil…..to bind evil and loose it from me and from those for whom I pray; and also to bind God’s love, joy, peace, patience, grace, wisdom, etc. the virtues of God, the seven Spirits of God…binding them to my soul by willfully and intentionally choosing that in my life…to be my life.
There have been many teachings on the Lord’s prayer over the centuries and when one receives it as for one’s own life as a member of the greater Body of Christ much can be accomplished in these latter days by one life at a time. Amen
“Hey, what a blessing to learn 😦 being so rigid like my battery candle with no potential to spark is religiosity!”
As I had been reading in Tozer’s ‘The Divine Conquest” last pm and this am his chapter on “The Holy Spirit as Fire”, I thought this segment fit Sara’s comment above. Interestingly, Tozer’s book copyrighted in 1950, holds things I find very applicable for today.
“It is no use to deny that Christ was crucified by persons who would today be called Fundamentalists. This should prove most disquieting if not downright distressing to us who pride ourselves on our orthodoxy. An unblessed soul filled with the letter of truth may actually be worse off than a pagan kneeling before a fetish. We are safe only when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, only when our intellects are indwelt by the loving Fire that came at Pentecost.”