Christian Living

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DO WE REALLY WANT THE FIRE
by Rev. Lynn Fowler

As I write Victoria, the state in Australia where I live, is ablaze. For the past week the temperatures have soared into the high 30s (Centigrade – around 100 on the Fahrenheit scale). Today it is tipped to reach 43, and strong, erratic winds are adding to the problem. Walking outside is like stepping in front of a blast furnace. Huge fires are burning out of control in the north, west and east of the state, the nearest one just about 50 kilometers from where I live. A smaller blaze is ripping through plantation forest just about ten kilometers away.

In our church service this morning we prayed about the fires, that God would turn them back on themselves, and that He would protect the firefighters. As I prayed I remembered that just a few days ago my Associate Minister and I, in our daily prayer time together, were praying for the fire of God to fall on our community. To lighten the mood just a little, I ended my prayer by saying, “By the way, Father, when we asked for fire the other day, this wasn't exactly what we had in mind!”

Of course, God knew that. Yet as I thought about it later, I couldn't help wondering whether we really know what we are requesting when we ask for the fire of God. We ask with the sense of wanting hearts to be ignited for the Lord, but we need to know that fire does much more that quicken our passion.

It has been said that fire destroys what it cannot purify and purifies what it cannot destroy. As I watch the television images of the fires sweeping through the countryside, I see many things which cannot stand the purifying power of fire give way before the flames. Trees, fences, sheds – sadly, even animals – crumble before its unrelenting, unforgiving force. Technically, things burn because the heat of the fire changes their nature. That which has been solid begins to turn into a gas, which then ignites, producing more heat, which turns more of the solid into a gas, and so the process continues until there is nothing left but ash.

If we were to visit a gold refinery, we would see the same power of fire at work, yet with very different results. The gold is not destroyed by the fire, but purified. The impurities in the ore are drawn out to the surface, where they can be skimmed off, leaving the gold in a purer state than before it was put into the fire. The gold itself is not changed by the fire. It does not turn into a gas, but accommodates the heat.

God desires to refine us. So He heats things up a little – sometimes, it seems to us, unbearably so. His purpose is not to destroy us, but to purify us. There are things buried deep in our lives that He wants to bring to the surface so that He can remove them from our lives. The process is not fun, but in the end we will come out better for it.

On the other hand, if we insist on clinging to those things which God desires to remove from our lives, those things which He intends to destroy with His fire, then there is a very good chance that we will end up getting burned, possibly quite badly. God's fire both purifies and destroys. If we learn to accommodate the heat, yielding to the work of God's fire in our lives, then it will purify us. But if we allow the heat to change our trust in God into anger, bitterness or resentment, those things will themselves increase the heat of our situation, in turn producing more anger, bitterness and resentment, until we are destroyed.

In a seeming contradiction, fire makes us both stronger and more malleable. When I was a child we lived in the country and used a horse and cart for transportation. When my parents took the horse to be shod, I would watch in wonder as the blacksmith took a length of solid, unbendable steel and put it in his furnace. Before long it began to glow red, then he would pull it out with long tongs and place it on the anvil, where he would hammer it into the shape of a horseshoe. The metal, which could never have been shaped while it was cold, yielded easily before his blows, and very soon was quite unrecognizable as the piece of steel with which he had started. Like wise, God intends to shape us into the image of Christ. To do so, He first heats us up. The fire makes us more malleable.

When steel is being tempered, the process is different. Through a succession of heating and cooling the steel, which was strong to begin with, is made even stronger. We too can be made stronger by the fires and storms of life, if we will allow God to temper us through it.

None of it is easy. There is a vast difference between watching the news of the fires on television whilst sitting in an air-conditioned room with a cool drink, and being with the firefighters on the front line as the flames roar through the forest. Likewise, there is a vast difference between praying for the fire of God from within our comfort zones and walking through the fire for which we have prayed. Before we pray, we really need to ask ourselves, “Do we really want the fire?”

© Lynn Fowler 2005.


Rev. Lynn Fowler is the Founder and International Director of Glory to the King Ministries International. Visit us at http://glorytotheking.com
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