Have you ever prayed for the fire of God? I used to. It sounded so cutting edge spiritual.
I wanted to be all that God wanted me to be. “Lord, bring your fire! Consume us,” I would pray.
I don’t really know what I was thinking. I guess I thought that literal fire would come out of heaven and burn up all the sinners and burn out all the sin in my friends, or some version of that. Maybe I thought I would see flames of fire dancing around the auditorium like God did for the Israelites in the wilderness.
I now realize I was clueless.
I don’t remember exactly when the fire came. It was such a small flame at first that I barely noticed. But I knew I wasn’t cool anymore. My friends didn’t think I was cool either.
Believe or not, as the flame grew in my life I had to ask what it was. I was looking for something else. Not really sure what, just something else. I ended up telling the Lord that I didn’t like all of the heat and pressure that was now coming into my life. Have you ever done that?
In all honesty, I was much blunter with God. I said something like this, “what are you doing?” Followed by, “why me?” Finished by, “when is this going to be over?”
I didn’t like all of the burning up of things from my life. In hindsight, the removal of things was the easiest part. It was the burning up of me that was causing the heat blisters. The flame started moving around in my soul and burning up motivations, attitudes, pride, and even my purpose.
I am still being burned up. Evidently there is a lot of wood to burn.
Most everybody knows I am being burned up now. I look like the ashes in a camp fire pit. It’s not glamorous. I won’t make the cover of Christianity Today anytime soon.
The problem is that most people think it’s the devil getting his way with me. If only that was true, I could rebuke the devil. It’s hard to rebuke what you prayed for.
I am praying that the oxygen supply will give out soon.
How is your heat blisters?
Craig Cooper 
Blisters? Oozing….. out from under my cute camoflague bandaids I bought for the grandchildren! Who knew?!
That’s great! Camouflage bandaids!
Yep! That is exactly what I was talking about when I said we are all being refined! Couldn’t have said it better!
Heat blisters? Try 3rd Degree burns. Those are flesh destroying.
I have been so much of the send down the fire group. In essence it is good it did not happen the way I had envisioned it. That would of been a sure path of self destruction and not in a positive spiritual sense. Instead of the glorious consuming flame of super spirituality I found a crash and burn. Instead of looking upward and inward I found myself looking outward and around.
I have found that it is not a problem to have an outward vision of God’s purpose for the world. Big plans can be humanly made and accomplished. Big dreams can be humanly developed and accomplished. The trouble is when the human abilities and efforts meet the end of the road it is crash and burn time which is a different type of consuming fire. The real test and though part is the inward vision and the personal purpose and the big plans or even the small plans God has for just one ….me.
It has taken me quite a while to realize all the GREAT people of action and faith never began their journey from the top. Being in a fast food generation I suppose tends to conditions us to get it now get it quick but I have found …yes that may happen …yes that is possible….but 99.99% of the time it is not going to happen in a sudden flash of super spiritual flash and fire.
I had often heard when I was younger, I don’t even really remember from who or where, that the Devil in in the details. Well sometimes I think that it is easier to focus on a large group or outward to someone else. i.e. Save the world, or I wish …. (fill in the Blank)…could have heard this message. The BIG question and the (Detail) is but are we saved and do we hear the message. When we do ……I think we all find we do have more ashes than we thought.