There’s an old saying that goes “Where there is smoke, there’s fire.” Well how do you want church tonight? Do you want it "No smoking" or do you want a sign that says "Caution: beware of flames?"
I was looking up what fire means and Strong’s concordance said that the word usage for fire was fire, flames, supernatural fire, fire for cooking, altar-fire, or God’s anger. Dictionary.com says its a blaze or process of burning, a changing from one substance to another. I want to change from this mortality and put on immortality one day from the process of burning through this flesh. It’s a launching of something forcefully. I know that I want to take this gospel to the streets with force, not just haphazardly sitting around saying, "well, I think it will get done." No! I wanna take it out there and get it done.
I don’t know about you but I think we are going through the refiner’s fire lately with all these accidents going on. The things that are going on, its just a little trial here, trial there. It’s just fire for the purifying process. To open fire, to declare war, to play with fire, to set something on fire, or to set a fire under something. I don’t know about you but I declare war on the devil with fire of praise and worship.
Through this we are going to see the devil start flying.
I have my Boy Scout handbook that I brought because I looked up some things about fire. It says that before you can have a campfire, you must have a place to put the fire. You should clean an area up, so a healthy fire can exist in the place prepared for it. Much like when you want the Holy Ghost or revival, you can’t have a dirty dwelling place for this thing or it will not survive....
When you build your fire ring, you should have an area of about 5-10 feet around the circle cleared out, so that there is room to grow and that if any embers get loose prematurely, they won’t cause any damage. Now before you can light this fire there is still another step. The book says you should have a 2-inch layer of sand or soil so the ground beneath it will not be scorched to leave a permanent black mark. This is true with our walks with God because if we don’t have a foundation of love, prayer, and the Apostolic message, you will burn out too fast and your witness will quickly be scorched among the people and they will not take you seriously.
You have to have the RIGHT Materials.
The flame of a match is just large enough to burn the matchstick, TO light a fire, it needs a little help, for this you will need tinder, kindling and fuel. To be an effective witness you have to be tender. You have to have kindness, before you can ever fuel anyone’s desire to come to the house of God. Without any of the three layers, your fire will not survive. Much like your walk with God.
Tinder is like a new convert, it catches fire quickly and easily burns out fast because there is not much substance there to fuel it. Tinder consists of little things like cotton, grass and bark, fluff from some seed pods.
Kindling is dry dead twigs no thicker than a pencil.
Fuel, this is the most important of the three layers, while it is true without the first 2 you cannot effectively use the fuel layer, if you don’t have enough fuel your fire will soon die. Our fuel is prayer and fasting. Fuel wood could be as small as your finger or as thick as your arm. The key part to fuel is to use DEAD, dry sticks you find on the ground. Live wood is a poor fuel because it is full of moisture that will cause the fire to die. This is why if we want to see revival, we cant be living in our flesh. We have to die out. We can’t be just sitting back on the pew with our arms crossed all service wondering why God’s not touching us, We can’t not just sit there and listen to the wrong music when we go home from church. We can’t be watching the wrong programs on TV; we can’t be sitting there saying, "Look at Bro. So and So" he’s not this, he’s not that. Quit backbiting your neighbor. What we have to do is die out to the flesh, through prayer and fasting and dwelling together in UNITY of the spirit. This is why for the past however many months, we have been preaching, Unity, commitment, Holiness and basic salvation. WE are being put through the refiner’s fire that we might come out like pure gold. You wanna know why we keep seeing church members in accidents and having sickness and job situations looking very grim? It’s the devil is seeing what we don’t see that revival is not just coming in a few months or a couple years, but its here RIGHT NOW! if we open up our eyes to the spirit world and realize that the Lord is waiting on us to stop waiting on him for revival and start acting like we have revival in our souls, its time for us to get up and move out and do what God has told us to do. Revival isn’t on the way, Revival is here!!!
It is time for winning. If you think your boss hates you, you or a family member has been in an accident, money is getting tighter by the day, your sick in body, don’t have a pity party. REJOICE!!!! These are just trials of your faith to see if you will be faithful to see the out come, revival and eventually Heaven. Isaiah 43:2 says “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” And First Peter 1:6&7 says “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:” If you want revival all it takes is getting back to our basics. The basic necessities of our Christian beliefs, Unity, Oneness, Holiness and of course Acts 2:38 message.
It is no wonder that the building fire process has with three layers, if you don’t know God today... There is another three process thing that you can go through to get the fires of revival burning in your heart.
Step one: Repentance, dying out to your self, asking God to forgive you and walking away from your sins.
Baptism in Jesus name for the remission of sins, being buried with him in baptism as the Word says.
And getting the precious gift of the Holy Ghost with evidence of speaking in tongues as the spirit give the utterance, the cloven tongues like as a fire. This promise is unto you today and not just for some of you but all of you. You can only find this fire at an altar. It is time to stand up and say Revival’s not coming, it’s here!
