fire

Leviticus 6:9 "Command Aaron and his sons, saying, "This is the law of the burnt offering: The burnt offering shall be on the hearth upon the altar all night until morning, and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it."
Have you noticed the plague of the church? There appears to be a shortage of fire...the world seems to be growing ever darker by the hour. The headlines seem to be more and more evil...right? Haven't you noticed. And since you who are reading this are probably part of the Church...not just my church, but the Church, I would have to assume that perhaps you have caught a glimpse of this in our altars...yeah, our very sacred altars and pulpits and on our major Christian tv networks. We huddle around the fire of those who blaze like cold refugees wandering the world in hopes of finding the real deal! And so we'll do anything to find it! We'll travel any distance to witness it! We put up with such ridiculous behavior because we soooo want the fire! So we treat those who have the fire of God like Rock Stars! We put their faces on the cover of magazines and pay absurd astronomical amounts of money to have them come to our corner of the cold universe to provide some temporary relief to the numbing coldness we feel pushing in on us from the outside. We hang on every word, send our lifes savings, make them our own personal idols and neglect the body that God has called us to minister to. We know that the fire is what will consume our sacrifice...because that is what the fire was supposed to do! God said to Moses to instruct Aaron and his sons. Wow, God was speaking to generations not just Aaron, but his sons and his son's son's. All the way to you and me. It was like God was saying, "Don't let the fire on the altar be smaller than the sacrifice you place on it!" When our fires get small, the sacrifice or the thing we place on the altar tends to snuff out the fire...because it is bigger than our fire. Sacrifices are wet and bloody and messy...so the fire had to be really hot to consume the sacrifice.
I can't begin to tell you how many times I visit a hospital and the family members circle around their dying loved ones hoping for fire to fall...instead of bringing the fire, they pray for fire to come from somewhere other than themselves...Imagine the pressure of being that guy! You walk in the room and they want your fire to consume the thing that they have placed on the altar??? I assure you, you have not known pressure until a family member looks you in the face and asks you the hard, real question of life or death. So they huddle around you as you pray, hanging on every word and waiting for the descent of heavens fire to manifest in the lifeless body they love so dearly, only to have.......nothing happen. And this is the problem is'nt it, my fire can't consume your sacrifice! It can inspire your fire and cause it to blaze hotter, but it cannot burn your pain, problem, death, circumstance. The fire that consumes the dead thing on the altar is non-transferable...but still we try don't we.
Recently, I was involved in a large building project for my little girl. There was a lot of lumber left over, so I instructed my youngest son to burn it in our fire pit in the back yard. A few minutes passed and I noticed my wife running through the back yard to rescue all the yard furniture that had begun to catch fire. God help my sons! Apparently I was not clear enough on my instructions to my son. He heard the word fire, and proceeded like a rabid caveman to build the biggest fire he could. He stopped by the garage and picked up some tiki fuel and matches and began the blaze that burned roughly 10 feet high...remember, we are in my back yard and I live in a community! And then God began to speak...."Troy, if you are ever going to start a fire, it must start here! In your own back yard." There is a part of scripture that speaks of this found in Acts 1:8 "But you shall recieve power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of teh earth." We tend to think that the fire originates in Church, but this is not the case. The power begins in Jeruselam! Jeruselam is symbolic of the small places in life...small people...like our children, and small places like our homes. It's name actually is interpreted "Foundation of peace"...meaning, that our foundation must recieve the fire power before it can come from any other place. This is the genesis of our fire...no fire at home means no fire at church, no fire in the hospital, no fire on the job, no fire when crisis comes! The small things in life are rarely treasured by our western mentality of grande cafe' faith. This is the process of real fire...tinder first! Small, dry, brittle ingredients that rest beneath the large structures of culture waiting for the spark of fire to ignite a real revival or super fire to burn through the coldness that plagues our nation...and now is begining to spread to the rest of the world! WAtch out Africa...the disease of America's greed is on its way!
to be continued!