God said to Jeremiah, "I will make my words in your mouth a fire" (Jer. 5:14). On that occasion God was referring to fire as a judgment. But God similarly makes our words fiery in order that His people may become aflame with holy love, zeal, and obedience.
When the Holy Spirit sets our heart aflame He will cause our words to be aflame. When our personality is aflame with commitment to Christ and with a burning vision of what He purposes to do for us, our whole leadership comes alive with life and becomes vibrant with power.
We must constantly maintain our consecration, even as the priests maintained the fire on the altar of the temple. God honors when we make repeated occasions to renew our commitnent, confess our total dependence upon Him, and appropriate and implore anew His gracious Spirit's ministry within and through us. Let us note more fully this fiery of the Spirit.
He will sets you aflame with His fiery baptism. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire," said John the Baptist of Jesus (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16). This refers to "the fiery character of the Spirit's operations upon the soul searching, consuming, refining —as nearly all good interpreters understand the words."3 The inner fire of the Spirit sets the Spirit-filled person ablaze with His divine presence.
He empowers you with His fiery divine energy. The fire
of God speaks also of His divine energy ready to empower His own are totally surrendered to Him. Christ desires that all the fiery ministry of the Spirit be active in your life. "1 have come to bring fire on the earth" (Luke 12:49). He
kindled the holy flame of God in the hearts of His followers as He began His earthly ministry. But He knew they needed more of the Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit visibly descended in holy flame upon the men and women gathered in the Upper Room. Empowered by the Spirit, they tFgan to spread God's holy fire that very day. For decades the Spirit's fire kept burning and spreading. Persecution could not quench their fire, it only served to fan the flames. Pentecost lit a flame that by God's grace will never go out.
He sets you aglow with His fiery radiance and zeal. Romans 12:11 urges, Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor :.$é You have spiritual zeal when you are spiritually ablaze. Weymouth translates this, "Have your spirits aglow "; Good speed, "on fire with the Spirit"; and the Revised Standard Version states it, ''Be aglow with the Spirit."
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The Holy Spirit revives your spirit, fills you with abundance of life, love, and zeal, and sets you aglow so that you manifest the vibrant, radiant life of God. He will revive your devotion, accelerate your obedience, and fan into flame your zeal. As a Spirit-filled believer you should be marked by the intense devotion, eager caustness, and the loyal bondservice which characterizes the heavenly angels. Apollos (Acts 18:25) was thus ablaze. The literal tanslation can be that he was 'burning in spirit," or ''glowing with the Spirit." When the Spirit burns within you in freedom and fullness, your inner life becomes radiant, your zeal intense, and your service dynamic. You, in the words of Ephesians 5:16, are "making the most of every opportunity
The need for this spiritual glow and zeal is emphasized by the condition of the church in Laodicea which had grown lukewarm (Rev. 3:15—16). The spiritual temperature of a Spirit-filled leader should remain high. The Spirit desires so to fill you with burning, glowing agape love that your life is radiant with His presence. Whether the translation of Romans 12:11 is to be aglow with the Holy Spirit or to be aglow in your own spirit, the Enabler is ever the Spirit Himself.
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His active fullness must permeate your personality and service. He provides you gifts which you are to stir into flame. Spiritual gifts are endowments for service given through the activity of the Holy Spirit. God provides whatever divine enablements we need for the service to which He appoints us. The Holy Spirit Himself is God's great gift to us (Acts 2:38) but He bestows grace-gifts (charismata) providing divine endowment and enablement for serving God and the body of Christ.
"Fan into flame the gift of God which is in you," Paul urged Timothy (2 Tim. 1:6). Notice the gift was "in" him. The Holy Spirit primarily works from within, not upon in some external sense. He does not manipulate us, He enables by His indwelling presence and power.
God never appoints or guides you to do a service without being available to endow and empower ym.i with all you need to do His will. But there is a cooperating role for you to play. You must kindle anew, or fan into full flame the divine endowment. God's gifts are given to be cherished and used. To fail to use them as Cod desires is to fail God and people. We develop them by use. As we use God's endowment, the Spirit enables us, guides us, and makes us fruitful.
The constant tendency of fire is to go out. The Spirit not waste divine energy. If we do not obey and use the grace God provides, He ceases to bestow. The Greek tense of the verb emphasizes the continuous rekindling of the flame. The spiritual bingraphy of many a Christian leader is "once ablaze." Was there a time when you were more ablaze for God than you are today?
Praise God, a flickering flame that is almost gone can be fanned into brilliant fire again. That fanning must be a continuous process. Five times in Leviticus 6 God instructed that the fire on the altar of burnt offering was never to go out. He had initially given that fire from heaven (Lev. 9:24; 2 Chron. 7:11). God supplies the fire,. but we must keep it burning. We constantly need the Spirit's fire, symbolizing the divine presence within us, and we constantly need the touch
