With the Holy Spirit and Fire

With the Holy Spirit and Fire

The Word of God tells us that our God is a consuming fire. Our God is Holy. There is no darkness in Him. No vestige of sin can ever be in His presence. Thank God for Jesus!

There was no way for us to ever return to the relationship lost in Adam’s fall. There was no way for us to become alive again now that we were dead in our rebellion. God made a way where there was no way. God Himself came to rescue and restore humanity to Himself. He did it because of His love, His faithfulness and His righteousness.

He made us for intimacy with Him and He will not be thwarted. He created us to know life, not death, wholeness not frustration, flourishing, not incompleteness. You who now belong to Jesus are heirs of God. You are a people called by God to display His glory.

   People are meant to see the salvation of God in and through you.

It is you being transformed by the Holy Spirit to have the character and nature of Jesus--alive and exhibited in you--that is God's "convincing conviction" for those who may call you by name. That is why Jesus came to baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. We can only live the Life of God by the Power of God.

John the Baptist’s analogy in Matthew chapter 3 comes from the wheat harvest. Wheat and chaff were never left together after the harvest. There was a threshing, a beating of the wheat to separate the edible kernel from the outward inedible husk. A threshing floor was always up on a hill where the wind was blowing…Holy Spirit? After the threshing, everything was thrown up into the air. The wind would blow away the useless and lighter husk and the heavier wheat kernels would fall again to earth. The process went on till all the chaff was blown away and only the grain remained. Separating the wheat from the chaff was necessary is there was to be bread for eating and seed for sowing.

When Jesus Christ came to live His life within me, His Eternal Life, I went from death to life. I was, by the Holy Spirit, united to the death of Jesus and united to His resurrection in a moment.

I became a new creation. The salvation of God made His home in me. I then began to find my life being changed day by day due to what Jesus had already done within me. A separation began to take place. In me there were habits, behaviors, thought patterns and choices I had made for years that were as empty and lifeless as chaff. The Lord was not going to allow those things to remain a part of my daily "being". I was no longer "my own" but was His...all of me.

Since that beginning, I have experienced the "threshing and winnowing" of the Lord. Sometimes the chaff comes off rather easily. Other times, my idolatry has been so tenacious that the threshing of my soul has needed to be much more intense…and rather unpleasant (Hebrews 12:1-13) I am amazed at how stubbornly I can be by holding on to things that could never give me life and peace as thought they could. I am so thankful for the patience of my God and Savior.

Over and over again He has made my blind eyes see so I might repent, turn from folly and relinquish the chaff I had been so enthralled with. God's Love for me in Jesus Christ is a never ending, never giving up, all consuming kind of Love that is so passionate and committed that He will not rest until I am full set free…

Free from anything & everything that would bind me or hinder me from knowing the fullness of life so that in Him I might flourish. His fire is intense and can never be quenched. I am reminded of the three Hebrew young men that were thrown into the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar. The only things that were burned up were the things that had them bound.

Jesus intends to baptize all who follow Him with the Holy Spirit. That is His will for all believers. We are meant to be clothed with power from On High. We are to be anointed, immersed in the Holy Spirit because it is only in the power of God that the purpose of God is accomplished. Jesus also promises each of His followers that we will know His baptism with fire, to burn away anything that would bind us or prevent us from following Him with our whole hearts.

We make idols of almost anything...usually good things gone awry: education, money, beauty, power, sex, possessions...etc. In themselves these are not evil...but when we look to them to give us what only Jesus can provide, they become vicious, ravenous, never-satisfied overlords of sin.

Do you have anything that seems to be being "thrown up in the air"? Is there a sense that something is being shaken loose? Has the Lord been whispering, "Why are you doing that...thinking that...following that?" so that there is a lack of peace in that area of your life? Welcome to the loving threshing floor of the Lord.

Bring whatever it is and surrender it to Him. He will be faithful to separate you from whatever the chaff may be. Do not be afraid of the fire of the Lord. He gives you His Power in the Holy Spirit to be able to follow Him in obedience from where you are to what He has prepared for you to live and be.

As the Day of the Lord draws nearer, God's Word tells us that judgment will begin with the House of the Lord. The intensity of His Love is not surprising. The Lord, in His compassion, will make us ready to receive Him when He returns. I personally do not want to be clinging to what is destined for unquenchable fire, do you?

Jesus wants us living in His light now, having that light shine for all to see to light the way back to Him. Is His discipline on the threshing-floor pleasant? No. but we can rejoice in the process, the Lord loves us as true sons and daughters. We are experiencing the salvation of God in being set free.