Fire Within

Yesterday, I was outside in San Marino (where I was babysitting), all the sudden it smelled like smoke and then there was ash in the air. Obviously, there must have been a fire somewhere nearby. As I thought about the fire, I started thinking about all that fire is both physically, metaphorically, and the connection therein. I thought about some of the ways God used fire in the Bible: to reveal Himself, to guide people through the darkness, in the midst of sacrifice, in an all consuming way. I thought about the physical aspects of fire: how it starts, what keeps it going, what it is made of. I wonder why God chose fire. It is amazing to me the different things in this world that God has made and the dualities they represent. Fire can bring warmth into our home but it can also destroy our homes (if it gets out of control). Fire consumes the land, destroying hopes and dreams. Yet metaphorically speaking, God's fire in our heart can bring hope and dreams to life. The metaphorical fire in our heart is what I am most intrigued by.

I want God's fire to be in my heart. I want Him to consume all the evil in my life so that His good can shine through the fire. Fire can be hot and burning or it can be a miraculous show of God's awesome power or sometimes a little of both. How can one word represent something that can bring both life and death? Yet if we look around, we can see so many things in our world that can be used for death or for life. However, I feel like every day there is a choice that I have to make. I get to choose to let God's fire in so that I can see the positive and the blessings that I have as the bad stuff burns away. Or I can choose to let a deathly fire in that brings destruction to the heart that God has given me. As I watch the ash fall yesterday I wondered where it was coming from. Curiosity was nagging me. I realized that I didn't want to just see the remnants floating around in the air but instead I wanted to see the fire. Just as I want to see God's fire in my life and let it be my guiding light. Most of my life I have had this desire. However, I recognize about five months ago that there has been something preventing me from letting God's fire completely consume me. My own sin blocked me. I let a deathly fire consume me. I let all the lies that I had told surround my heart, the truth about my life was unconsciously buried there. Although, I read God's truth and believed it, part of it was not able to make it into my heart. Yet, like God does all the time, He showed me His love, spoke His truth, and then I got to choose.

This time the choice was different for me. It was a life changing moment. I don't believe my life will ever be the same. The choosing wasn't easy...there was a battle within, a risk of unveiling who I had become, of really looking at myself and seeing the truth in the sin I had committed, of recognizing how far I had come from what my relationship with God could have been, of seeing how easy it is to fall into deadly fire. But for once I choose to let God's fire be my life and completely consume me, burning the lies away instead of just sitting around on the fringes (unable to consume due to lack of oxygen). On that day when I chose to breath in oxygen and let the fire rage, it burned like never before! So painful, but what life it has brought me.


Bits & pieces: Exodus 3:2, 13:21; Psalm 97:3; Malachi 3:2; Matthew 3:11; James 3:5,6