There is something so wonderful about watching a fire burn. It is both the most beautiful thing to watch and the most terrible all at once. Fire brings both warm and destruction. It is by far my favourite element. I spent a few nights this month under the stars gazing into fires and thinking about the fire of our God and how he uses fire to refine us and bring us closer to Him.
I asked a simple question this month about why the farmers would burn up their fields. The answer was to give the soil more nutrients, in order to produce a better crop for harvest. Wow if that is not a sermon right there. No one likes how you feel when you accidently burn yourself. Fire feels warm and good as long as you are not in it.
going to be in it and you’re going to walk out of it. The Bible says that we are to consider it all joy when trials come our way. I can tell you that dealing with pride, selfishness, dying to my desires, letting go of pain, unforgiveness, and everything else that we all, (yes we all) deal with is truly not that fun. It is never fun to have to deal with junk and have your nastiness be exposed. But that is the fire part. That is the pain. It is exposed and burned up and what is left is fresh soil. We are called to produce fruit in our lives. We are to make them count. Not for our sakes that any man should boast, but for the sake of the one who created us. God gave us life and with it, our lives should reflect the love and grace that God poured out on us through Jesus Christ. It is after God uses the fire to purge us and stir up the soil that we can start producing a better crop and have an even greater harvest. In my own strength and stubbornness and unwillingness to change I will only produce a tree of rotting nasty fruit that won’t taste good at all.
Allowing the fire and the refining process may hurt like heck, but it’s worth it, because the fruit you bare after will taste good. So good! So for those who God is refining let him. Humble yourselves and let God change you. No one likes the taste of a bad apple. It was a lesson that has taken me awhile to learn, and by grace and a whole lot of patience from our God, I think I finally may have gotten it. Fire to this day, despite the awesome amount of it that I have walked through, is by far still my favourite element.
