Are You On Fire Yet? (5 Tips to Ignite ~ or re-light ~ the Fire)
Don't you love that scripture from John the Baptist? Like so many of us, his heart was to serve God and to serve God's people. He lived a life of total submission and surrender to the Lord. His only desire was to fulfill the purpose God had planted in His heart and to see God's people repent and walk in union and deep relationship with their Father in Heaven. Yet he knew that what he had to offer only paled in comparison to what was coming in Jesus.
Like John, we are called to a deep relationship with God. When we submit ourselves to Him our own true purposes, callings and destinies are revealed. It is true, we each have an assignment to fulfill but first, we must become ignited by a deep and genuine love relationship with our Lord. Without this, all our efforts are merely works of the flesh and that is simply not high enough. We are not the answer to anything unless we bring Jesus' love into the equation.
When John spoke those words, he was speaking to the Pharisees. They knew the law and arrogantly preached it to others but failed at living it themselves. Jesus himself called them hypocrites. It's not enough to know what is right, we must also do what is right. It is no good to be self-righteous because all our righteousness is as filthy rags. (Is. 64:6) The thing is, God knew that we would want to do right but the doing itself was actually impossible. That’s why He sent Jesus to begin with. Now however, we have Jesus and we have a Holy Helper in the Holy Spirit who enables us to actually live a righteous life. The problem is that often we revert back to trying to do this thing on our own. We feel capable and qualified and sometimes even give ourselves permission to blow it because we haven’t tapped in to the grace available to us to help.
Like the Pharisees, it is possible to allow our kind deeds, generous contributions and helpful acts towards ministries, causes or other people to become mere routines or rituals. Sometimes we can make these deeds a part of our identity and forget the real reason we committed to doing them in the first place. We are warned by Jesus in Matt. 5:13 not to lose our saltiness and not to keep our light to ourselves. Sometimes we forget who we are and more importantly who we carry. It is time for the church to wake up and fall back in love with her saviour. We have got to stop living as if He didn’t die so that we could walk in holiness, abundance and fearless strength.
When the reality of that kind of love is let loose in our soul, then also like John, we will begin to recognize the smallness of our natural contributions anyway. I used to think John was being mean to the Pharisees. Now I don’t think he was being mean to them at all (although he did call them a brood of vipers). He was just so passionate about his convictions and wanted desperately for them to genuinely repent. He wanted their baptisms in water to be more than just something they did because of crowd-mentality or something they did either for show or just to say they had been there and done that.
God wants your whole heart to be in it. God wants you to live life on fire. When it is, then we can truly allow our ego to step aside and let the love of Jesus shine through us. Even as anointed believers we can only take people so far on the journey. Jesus must be welcomed in to every individual life so He can ignite a fire in them that will consume every lie, every hurt, every doubt and every fear so that they can live their destiny with ferocious faith.
Are you on fire today? Do you have ferocious faith? Thankfully, Jesus left us with a helper. The Holy Spirit enables us to know Christ's love and to receive that love so that our power and purpose can come alive. The Spirit opens portals for us into the heavenly dimension so we can have genuine communion and fellowship with God. The Spirit enables us to walk along the path we were meant to tread and live empowered and free.
Here are 5 Tips to Ignite ~ or re-light ~ the Fire in your life:
1. If you don’t know Jesus, step one is invite him in to your heart as Lord and saviour and ask Him to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Just ask and He will gladly come.
2. If you do know Jesus already, I suggest hanging around with blazing ones ... sparks are bound to fly.
3. If you feel yourself growing cold, don't just let the flame go out. Use a life-line and phone a friend, or a leader or connect with a ministry that imparts revelation of God's love for you into your heart.
4. Get committed to stoking the fire in others. It’s kind of hard to grow cold when you are standing near the flame.
5. Do not settle for less than His highest. His promises are for YOU. No matter what! His promises are yes and amen. One of those promises is the promise of a life that is “lit” from within to blaze for the king - oh yeah! We have got to see ourselves on fire and expect that fire to grow and grow and grow.
I submit to you that none of us is truly alive if we are not on fire. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to merely exist. I want to live with passion and destiny with the fire of the most high God burning in my soul. I want that for you too.
Do you know someone who could benefit from this pep-talk? If so, please send them to vitapanico.com/blog and please let me know if and how this ministered to you I really want to know. Also, please let me know if you have any questions or if you just need someone to pray with you. It would be my delight to do so.
Have an awesome week and remember, you are loved and deeply cherished by Jesus and by me!
