Have you ever seen or experienced a fire? Let me walk you through a short process of experiencing a house fire. Jane is cooking dinner in the kitchen and decides to walk away for a little while because the food is on the stove and in the oven. There is a 30 minute waiting period until the next step needs to be done. Jane decides to go watch her favorite T.V. show, American Idol, while the stove and oven work its magic. 15 minutes go by as she is thoroughly enjoying watching the singers compete. All of the sudden she looks over to see smoke rolling out of the kitchen. She frantically jumps up out of her seat to prevent the fire from spreading any more. As she is running to the kitchen the smoke detector starts yelling… beep beep beep beep… as loud as the device can yell. Jane runs into the kitchen to see that the fire is out of control. She cannot get to any water because it is engulfed in flames. She is panicking and yelling throughout the house…. FIRE!!!! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. Jane runs into her kids bedroom which is upstairs to see her youngest daughter jamming out to songs on her I-Pod and her other daughter is talking on the phone with her boyfriend. She grabs each one of them as she is yelling get out of the house there is a fire. The oldest daughter yells frantically at her boyfriend telling him she has to go because there is a fire in my house. She is freaked out! The youngest daughter sees her mother and sister freaking out and goes into a panic as well. Imagine what is going through all of their minds at this moment. Everyone is now freaking out stumbling over one another trying to get down stairs to get out of the house. They all make it out of the house safely but the flames from the fire engulf their two story home. The fire department showed up and put the fire out but it is to late. Everything in the house is now gone. The only thing left is the three of them. Now I have another question for you. Have you ever been through the fire? I am not talking about a house fire this time. I am talking about God putting you through the fire. I am now talking to Christ followers. I know I have been put through the fire several times and will experience the fire more than likely several more times in my life. God puts us through the fire to refine us. The first thing that I want you to notice from the story above is that everyone was very comfortable before the fire. The two girls and the woman were distracted by worldly things sitting in the comfort of their two story house. I do believe it is ok to watch your favorite T.V. show, listen to your I-Pod, talk on the phone, and have a relationship. But I also believe there can be to much of that and it can get in the way of us spending time with God. I believe that we can make things and/or people our God. We get comfortable doing worldly things every day and do not devote much of ourselves to God anymore. Then when God asks us to do something for Him we argue with Him and ask Him if we can do it after we get done with our worldly task. I know I have done this and am pretty sure you probably have too. God never wants us to be comfortable in our relationship with Him. What I mean is He does not want you to get to a point with Him and decide that you are comfortable with that much of God. He always wants us to seek more of Him and learn more about who He is. He is always wanting to spend more time with us as a loving father would want to. God loves His children and wants to teach them more and more every day. God wants us to have conversations with Him but it is so hard to do that when we are distracted by worldly things. Are you spending to much time devoting yourself to worldly things or are you balancing your time out allowing time for God? The second thing I want you to notice is when each one learned about the fire they all freaked out. God does not want us to freak out when He puts us through the fire. Worry comes from the devil and does not come from God. The devil wants us to freak out because it causes stress in our lives and gives him a foot hole to speak more lies into our minds and cause us to dig a deeper hole for ourselves. When a worry arises in your mind, God wants you to immediately give that worry to Him. Do not hesitate or ponder about the worry just give it to God. So next time a worry comes to you I want you to try three things. First, recognize that it is not of God. Next, tell Satan to take that worry to God. Finally, ask God to take that worry from you and leave it at the foot of the cross. God puts us through the fire to test us and strengthen us in our walk with Him. He allows some things to happen to us so we will learn from our mistakes and so we will rely on Him more. I believe God is always pushing me more and more to rely on Him every day I wake up. God also puts us through the fire to make us more like Him. He wants us to be citizens of heaven living on this earth so He has to sometimes teach us through discipline. In my life He has taken things and people away from me to draw me closer to Him. It really sucked at the time but I am thankful that He did because I have a more intimate relationship with Him now and that was probably the best way to get my attention to turn back to Him. In closing, I want to tell you that the Holy Spirit led me to write this blog. I am not sure who needs to hear this but I know some of you need to hear this right now. Hang in there because God is strengthening you right now. Do not turn back to the evil world. Continue to run to God and let Him shape you into a citizen of heaven. He will personally pull you out of the fire when the time is right. Be obedient to God and seek His will out for your life. Ask God if you need to give up anything for a while to come closer to Him.
