Our God Is a Consuming Fire

I posted this article almost a year ago, but I have felt a strong conviction to offer it again at this time.  Feel free to bypass it if you remember it well, but if not, perhaps it will meet a need for you today.

Our God Is a Consuming Fire

Hebrews 12:29 says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” Let Him burn in you today. Let His fire burn out every root of disease and infirmity that has taken hold in your body. Think about how a raging fire – a “consuming” fire – literally devours and consumes every tree, every bush, every blade of grass, every structure in its wake. Even if we’ve been blessed enough that we’ve never personally faced one of the huge forest fires that literally swallowed up whole neighborhoods as they swept out of wooded areas and right through highly populated suburbs, we’ve still seen on TV how nothing could stand in the face of the power of those fires.

Now, they were burning in response to something evil happening – a lightning strike, a careless match or cigarette, a campfire or bonfire gone awry. But Hebrews 12:29 is talking about a fire that burns from the heart of a loving God who created this world and created each one of us. A God who wants us to be free from sin and the curse it brought into the world. He wants us free from sickness, which is a major part of the curse. In fact, He wants us free so badly that He gave us Jesus to take all the sickness on our behalf, so that we could then be freed from having to bear it ourselves. Isaiah 53:4-5 tells us that Jesus “bore our sins, sickness, weakness, distress … sorrows and pains.” That passage then goes on to declare that “by His stripes, we are healed.”

The God who gave His only Son to bear our sickness considered it a privilege to set us free from the horrors of disease and infirmity. He comes to us in all of His power to do just that when we receive His Word and trust Him to be our physician.

Now, dear reader, don’t let yourself be deceived by those who are ignorant of God’s Word — who know only bits and pieces of it, mainly from someone else’s erroneous teaching. Many of those people will try to tell you that when the Bible refers to God’s fire it is referring to trouble and problems and all kinds of horrible situations that He sends for you to endure.  Not So! God’s Word does not say that. On the contrary, God says that He Himself is the consuming fire — not a problem, a tragedy of life, or some evil experience. It is God Himself who will come to you and, by the fire of His own Holy Spirit, burn up the things that have you bound up and suffering.

You don’t have to be afraid of the fire of God. That fire will not burn YOU; it will only burn out the destructive thing that is trying to steal the health and life out of you. In Joel 3:21, the Lord says of the time when His Holy Spirit would be set free in the earth (our present time), “I will cleanse their blood ….” He wants His fire to rage through your entire blood stream, cleansing it and purifying it.

Many times in history, when a city or community was in the throes of some plague, the authorities gave orders for the clothing and even, at times, the very homes of the sick to be burned, because that was the only way to thoroughly get rid of the root cause of the disease. Fire is more than a destroyer. It is a cleanser. The fire of God will not destroy us. It will destroy the disease, the demonic roots, the corruption that has taken hold in our bodies. That fire will cleanse us and set us free.

So, today, turn yourself over to the God who is a consuming fire. Invite Him to come in and burn within you. Now, He isn’t likely to burn out only the disease. When He is allowed to come in and work, He likes to do a thorough job. So don’t be surprised if, while He’s at it, he also burns out some wrong attitudes, ideas, prejudices, and sinful habits. Sometimes those things have been at the root of our sickness problem, or sometimes they hinder our receiving our complete healing. But always they hinder God from making us everything He wants us to be. So, if they are in the way, He’ll burn right through them as well.

Let God be a consuming fire in you today. Let Him consume everything that is not of Him and leave you clean and well and open to receiving all that He can give you of Himself.

 

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