Dying in the Smoke

When I was a young boy, I had to build the fire in the stove as one of my morning chores.  I remember so well placing the wood on glowing coals.  The smoke billowed through the open door until the fire caught hold.  Fire drove the smoke up the flu and out of the house.  An old godly minister once remarked regarding the apostasy of his time, “I was born in the fire, and I’m not about to die in the smoke”.  I understand what he meant.  The fire is the passion and blazing wonder of God that one experiences in the new birth.  It arrives with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  The fire propels one to go deeper into the folds of God’s love, to know Him fully, and to discover His will, among other things. God is a consuming fire.  To love Him is to dwell in the fire and with the fire in you.

The day I was delivered from the darkness was a day I will never forget.  The fire burned in my spirit.  All I wanted was to know and serve God more.  My rude wakening was to discover that all professing Christians do not have the same passion.  Some of them looked at me with condescending pity when I exuberantly described my experiences with God. Other ones excused themselves with a disinterested air. Eventually I discovered that there existed a Christianity void of passion for God.  I’ve come to believe that it is nearly as bad as a religion with a false god. Individuals in both groups will vociferously attack anything and anyone that hints of the fire of God.  Anything that challenges our passion to be pure and obedient to God is an attempt to quench our fire.  It does not matter what the cost, how many people reject us, how isolated and alone we may feel, we must not lose our fire.

I came to the realization that simply complaining about a fire-quenching situation is insufficient to overcome it.  One can sit in the smoke and complain, its acrid vapor burning the eyes and the nostrils, its fumes permeating the clothing and hair, but God’s fire won’t fall.  The children of Israel had to follow the cloud by day.  But when it came the night, they had to follow the fire.  If you do not move when the fire is present, you will eventually find yourself in the smoke.  The darkness from Satan and his world system presently wafts its deadly spiritual dearth into Christianity.  It can only be countered by fire.  Complaining in the smoke does nothing to conquer smoke.  I have observed many professing Christians, some of them dear friends, in power-drenching, fire-quenching, ministry-hindering, joy-killing, smoked up situations.  The smoke was draining them of passion for God.  They had two choices.  First, they could take the first step, and head to the nearest door leading to the closest path to victory.  If that is not an option, then they must start a fire.  After over three decades of being a Christian, I have endured many attempts by various forces to quench my fire.  I’ve pastored churches that were smoked up with compromise, sin, apathy and lethargy.  They didn’t remain long in a passionless condition.  Either they caught fire for God or burned with rage to get rid of me.  I left a denomination because of the smoke.  It wasn’t an easy path, but I had to have the fire.  I’m dead without it.  My souls knows no sense of purpose, no wealth of meaning, and I wither on the vine without God’s fire.

Every true Christian must keep his or her fire burning in this Laodicean age.  God’s fire and a fiery passion for God is the answer to lukewarm, compromising, Christianity today.  The smoke of dying faith and compromise is mingled with heresy and even licentiousness in many professing Christians.  I pray that God will raise up people with a fiery passion for Him, that will not fear to speak truth with boldness, and will not back down from apostate hirelings.  How exhilarating it would be to see fire-born men and women of God stepping up to challenge this present satanic surge of spiritual wickedness that threatens to destroy Christianity!  God is calling such people from all walks of life; people who do not believe they are worthy, some that believe that they are useless and incapable, and other ones that feel inferior and insignificant.  He has rejected the confident ones, the educated idiots and hirelings, and the braggadocios crowd of professing and confessing self-proclaimed “super apostles” that have not a clue to what true faith is.  The ones God is calling will not read the latest WOF book, the bestselling “telepastor” book.  They will reject the steady stream of spiritual filth that flows from most religious television networks.  They don’t need spiritual directors to help them sit cross-legged, turn their palms up in Yoga position, count their breaths, and enter an altered state of consciousness. The ones that God is calling already have intimacy with the true God.  They are ablaze with passion to do His will!  They are rising up with a prophetic voice; not like the modern false prophets that are nothing more than fortune tellers.  They will preach repentance from dead works to serve a living God. They will warn of the danger of lukewarmness, of living in shadows, and being unprepared to defeat deception and avoid apostasy.  Love them or hate them, but they will not yield to demands that they shut up and go away.  God is going to shake everything that can be shaken until only that which cannot be shaken will remain.  Only fire-born, fire-bathed, and fire-filled believers will endure to the end.  I plead with the ones who are withering on the vine and close to becoming a castaway, don’t die in the smoke.  Allow the word of God to convict you.  Repent before Him and ask for His Holy Spirit to possess you with holy fire.