Fire

FIRE 

 

Scripture never describes the Holy Spirit as something you just file away. It reaches for pictures. Fire. Wind, or breath. Oil, poured out and running down. Water - and not just water, but rivers of living water springing up from within a person who believes.

 

Notice something about every one of those pictures: they're all inanimate. An element. A substance. A force of nature you can feel but not hug.

 

But he is not a force. He's not an energy field, a vibe, a "presence" you can switch on with the right worship set. He is a person - the third person of the Trinity, with a mind, a will, and affections of his own. He can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). He speaks (Acts 13:2). He leads (Romans 8:14). Every image Scripture reaches for is a window into what he does, not a definition of what he is.

Hold onto that, and let's walk through one of those pictures: fire. More than almost any other image in the Bible, fire never shows up empty-handed. It doesn't just appear. It appears because — there's always a reason attached to it, and that's the thread running through everything below.

 

In Luke 4:16-18, 20-21, “it says And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed... And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, 'Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'"

 

Now watch the word that holds the whole passage together. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me." Because is a conjunction. It connects an action to its reason. The Spirit doesn't fall on Jesus so he can feel something. The Spirit falls on him so he can do something.

 

Fast forward to Acts. The Holy Spirit falls on the day of Pentecost, and the very next thing that happens is Peter stands up and preaches, and three thousand people repent in a single day. That's the pattern. The Spirit doesn't just fall on you to give you goosebumps.

 

Feeling the fire for a few days after a powerful service is good — genuinely good. But here's the test: if it doesn't lead to action, if it doesn't lead to change, perhaps the fire wasn’t in you, maybe you were just standing near one.

 

Because — that word again — he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. That's the gospel in a nutshell. Good news for the poor. Liberty for captives. Healing for the sick. Freedom for the oppressed. That's a different kingdom than the one we're living in physically, and it's the kingdom the Spirit falls on us to build. Lord let your Kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

 

So how does God actually lead us? By the power of the Holy Spirit. He doesn't lead from a distance. He lives inside of us.

 

He Leads With Fire

Check this out — Matthew 3:11. John the Baptist says: "I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."

 

It's Jesus who baptises us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Why fire? Why not a twenty-year plan? He doesn't hand you a point-by-point itinerary of what's going to happen for the next two decades of your life. He leads with fire.

 

Right after John says this, two of his own disciples start following Jesus instead. He turns and asks them, "What do you want?" Jesus doesn’t give them a strategy document. They don't get a vision statement. They don't get a magnetic calendar to stick on the fridge. They get: "Come and see." That's it. Just follow. Just trust. Leave everything behind. 

 

At Pentecost, the Spirit fell like tongues of fire. The Holy Spirit leads us, and he is a fire. God led the Israelites through the dark of night, and he led them with fire - a pillar that never left them. When he leads us through the darkness of this world, he leads us the same way. With fire. With the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

What Kind of Church We Want Bloom Community to be

When we talk about what kind of church we want to be part of, three things come to mind. A church in love with God - ministering to his heart comes first, before anything else. A church that's Spirit-led and a church that's on fire.

 

Why fire? A believer on fire doesn't suck the life out of a room - they deposit life into it. A church on fire prays for the sick. A church on fire reaches the lost. A dead church, by contrast, comes to consume. A dead church thinks it's all about them - that God should serve them, and so should everybody else in the room. An on-fire believer steps into the gap instead. They serve. They give. They tell people about Jesus.

 

Which category do you fall into?

 

When something burns, it actually undergoes a chemical reconstruction. It was one thing, and after the fire, it's a genuinely new thing. That's not just a metaphor - it's literally what fire does, and it's what fire does to us too.

 

So what's the actual sign that you've had an encounter with God? It's not emotion. It's not necessarily how you felt in the moment. The sign of a real encounter with God is rearranged priorities.

So how do you get on fire - go to a conference, go to a worship night? Maybe? Watch where fire actually shows up in Scripture, and you'll see it was never a technique. It was always a person, doing something for a reason.

 

Fire Is for a Reason

There's a church in Revelation 3 that thought it was fine. Not persecuted. Not poor. Not in crisis. Laodicea. And Jesus doesn't open with a compliment.

"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:15-16)

 

Notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say cold is fine and hot is the goal. He says cold would be better than this. Lukewarm isn't a safe middle ground between fire and ice — it's the one temperature God can't stomach. Because lukewarm doesn't fight him and it doesn't follow him. It just sits there, comfortable, useless, and calls itself faithful. It doesn’t know it’s dead.

 

That's the condition many Christians are in. Not rebellious. Not cold-hearted. Just lukewarm. Scripture has a word for what fixes that. Fire.

 

From the very first pages of the Bible to the last, fire is how God often shows up — and every time, there's a because attached.

 

Moses meets him in a bush that burns and isn't consumed — presence without destruction (Exodus 3:2). There's a because: free my people.

 

Israel is led through the wilderness by a pillar of fire that never leaves them (Exodus 13:21-22). There's a because: be my people.

 

On Mount Carmel, when Elijah stands alone against 450 prophets of Baal, the proof of the real God isn't a feeling — it's fire that falls from heaven and eats a soaked altar down to the stones (1 Kings 18:38). There's a because: to prove God reigns above the small-g gods.

 

And in Isaiah 6, when the prophet finally sees God as he is, Isaiah doesn't feel impressed. He feels ruined. "Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips." So a seraph flies to him with a burning coal off the altar and touches his mouth with it. It cleanses him. And only then - only after the cleansing fire - does Isaiah hear the question that changes his life: "Whom shall I send?" Only then can he answer: "Here am I. Send me." (Isaiah 6:6-8) That order matters. The fire didn't come to make Isaiah feel something. The fire came to send him somewhere.

 

Which brings us back to Pentecost. The fire that had hovered over Israel's camp, that had filled Solomon's temple, that had touched one prophet's lips, falls again - but this time it doesn't sit over a building. It splits, and rests on individual lives. "They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them" (Acts 2:3). Every believer becomes the burning bush. Every believer becomes the altar. And the fire didn't fall so the disciples could have a powerful experience in an upper room and nothing else. It fell, and within minutes Peter was preaching Christ crucified and risen in the street, and three thousand people were saved that same day. The fire fell for a reason. Not a feeling. A mission. The fire of God has always been, and will always be, fire for the gospel.

 

So ask yourself honestly — not "did I feel something," but "did it send me anywhere." Did it send you to pray for the sick? To run toward the broken instead of away from them? To open your mouth about Jesus to somebody who's never heard it plainly? Or did the fire touch you once, warm you up for an hour, and go out the moment you walked out the door - in which case, you were never actually on fire, you were just standing near one.

 

God is not looking for a room full of people who feel warm. He's looking for people willing to say what Isaiah said, after the coal touched his lips and burned away his excuses: "Here am I. Send me." Not "make me comfortable." Not "make me feel something." Send me.

 

Because our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29) - he's not a scented candle. He didn't save you to keep you lukewarm in a pew. He saved you, and set you on fire, so you'd carry that fire to somebody who's still sitting in the dark.

 

Preach the Gospel

All of this is for one thing. The gospel is not about an angry God rescuing us from himself. It's about God rescuing us from what we've become apart from him. So many people we know have become something apart from him that they were never meant to be - something so much smaller than what he made them for.

 

Jesus said it plainly: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

 

God is with you so that you can speak to people. That's the whole point of the fire. Not to warm you. To send you.

 

If You're Lukewarm

If you're reading this and you feel lukewarm - distant from God, going through motions that used to mean something - let's change that.

The fuel for the fire is a willing heart. When fire fell on Mount Carmel, it fell on a sacrifice laid on the altar. That hasn't changed. Let him be Lord of your life. Let him have your heart, your life, your finances, your addiction, your sin — whatever it is you're still holding back from him, let him have it. Let your life be a living sacrifice and watch the fire fall when you surrender.