Are You Fired Up For Jesus? Series

When your heart is on fire for someone; that means you are passionate about that person. Jesus came to give us that kind of burning, passionate, love relationship with the God of the Universe. If God is like fire, there are several things He wants to do in your life that can be compared to fire.

2. GOD’S FIRE GENERATES UNLIMITED POWER

There is a scientific field called Thermodynamics. It deals with the relationship between heat and mechanical energy and the process of changing one into the other. Your car has an internal combustion engine that burns fuel and changes it into the motion that pushes the pistons, and turns the drive shaft which turns the wheels which lets you get to from point A to point B. Electricity is produced in plants that use gas, coal, or a nuclear to transform heat into power. When you plug in an appliance in your home, that electrical current again is transformed back into some kind of energy.

I want to introduce a new concept to you. I call it Spiritual Thermodynamics. Jesus said in Acts 1:8 “You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The Holy Spirit living in you is like the fire of God that generates the power you need to live the Christian life. He gives you power to share your faith or to forgive people who have hurt you, or to love unlovely people. In your own strength you can’t live the Christian life. Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.” (John 5:5) But the fire of God in your heart will be like a spark that generates the energy you need to live the Christian life. John says we have an “unction” from the Holy Spirit. The key to Spiritual Thermodynamics is: You can’t function without the unction!

Fire will only keep burning as long as it has fuel and oxygen, but when it runs out of either, it will go out. Now, God is eternal, but the power He provides us is not something we can just take for granted as always being there. We must tend the fire in order to keep it burning. There’s a great lesson we can learn from the fire on the altar of the temple. God gave these instructions in Leviticus 6:12: “The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out. Every morning the priest is to add firewood and arrange the burnt offering on the fire.”

If you don’t tend a fire, it will simply burn itself out. The sad thing is, this can also happen spiritually. At the this point, I want you to stop for a moment as you ask yourself a very important question:

PAUSE FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION: HAS THE FIRE GONE OUT IN MY HEART?

Was there ever a time when you were more excited and fired up about the Lord than you are now? Has your zeal and passion for Christ cooled down? During the 1960s and 1970s being “cool” was a good thing. In the old television show, “Happy Days”, there was a character named Fonzie, who was the epitome of “cool.” Everybody wanted to be cool. To be cool, you had to look disinterested. You never got excited. You never really became passionate about anything. You never got in a hurry. You always kept one hand in your jeans and looked bored most of the time. You were just ... cool, man.