Jan 17 - Eternal Fire

We showed up for about the last 90 minute or so today. The mood was very gentle when we arrived. It was just a handful of people waiting on the Lord.

As worship went on, something triggered the story of the two men who met Jesus on the Emasus road. After he revealed himself to them, they exclaimed "Didn't we feel our hearts warmed as he revealed the scripture to us?" Jesus walked with them, revealed the scripture to them, and broke bread with them. They felt their hearts warmed within his presence. That's what God does in us. Wether we meet him in our travels through the world, through scripture, or through the sacraments or meals, we feel our hearts warmed. Even those who don't believe in God sense a warmth in the community or in the worship or in the kind gestures they see in the world. They may supress it but it is still there. A strange warming in the heart.

God give us hearts that are warm; no give us hearts that are on fire for you. We want to burn with your fire. We want to burn with singularity of desire. We try to give ourselves fire. We drum up the energy to get through the day or the week. But we don't have the fire we need to spend the rest of eternity pressing into the mystery of God's love. That's our goal. Its a goal that is too big to be shared with any other goals. The psalmist said, "One thing I ask, this I seek, to dwell in the house of the LORD to gaze on the beauty of the LORD." We want that fire that burns for one purpose.

But that fire is an all consuming one. It doesn't share. It is like the fire that came down from heaven onto Elijah's sacrife an consumed the sacrifice and the alter and the dust and the water. That's the fire we need but it will consume everything. It will destroy things that are not useful for its purpose. It purifies the soul. This eternal fire purifies the soul for an eternal mission.

Men will use fire to burn fields that aren't producing so that a new crop can be sown in its place. In movies we sometimes see the old medical procedure of using a hot iron to sear a wound that needs to be protected from infection. Eternal Fire burn in us in that way. Destroy the sickness and infection that will kill us and prevent us from bearing a harvest for you.

What is this eternal fire? How can we open ourselves to its work? How does it perform its work and where is it performed? The eternal fire is God's own presence purifying his people. It is the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin. But more than that it is the triune God wooing us, stiring up in us desires that can only be satisfied by him. We are truly sacrifices that will be consumed by his eternal fire. But we are lay our bodies down as a sacrifice because we are overwhelmed by the mystery of the love that is evident in the sacrifice of Christ Jesus. We are a sacrifice because he was a sacrifice. In our bodies, in our hearts, our minds, and our spirits we are willing to sacrifice many things in order that we might more closesly resemble the sacrifice of Christ.

We want our ministry, our testimony to the world, our worship before God to be nothing more than what Wesley described, "I light myself on fire and men come to watch me burn." We open ourselves completely to the Spirit so that he might burn in us and form us into the image of Christ.