Consume Me Lord

Hebrews 12:29

“For our God is a consuming fire.”

God is never finished with us. As long as there are things in our life that need to be left on the altar, His fire will continue to consume them. The Lord never reaches a point where He says you’re holy enough, spiritual, enough, disciplined enough, cleansed and purified enough, and so my fire is finished in your life.

God’s desire for His fire in our lives is not just to touch us, no, no, no! He wants to consume us! God wants to purify us through the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost. He wants to make us holy, just as He is holy. He wants our lives to experience a Holy Ghost invasion!

Hebrews 1:7 – “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh His angels’ spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.”

Notice carefully the wording here. We are not just called to be ministers on fire, but ministers of the fire.

1 Peter 4:10 – “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

Minister and steward are basically the same thing. Both are called to manage and oversee the goods of another, to be responsible for distributing to, and serving the needs of others. God has made us stewards and ministers of His fire. His anointing is not placed on us simply so that we will be on fire for Him, but so that we might become distribution centers from which his fire is released into the lives of others.

God and Fire are inseparable. Fire has always been a symbol of the divine presence and power of God.

Exodus 40:38 KJV – “For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

There should be a three-fold operation of the fire of God in our lives: First the fire of God is given to you, second the fire of God begins to work in you and to consume you, and then finally the fire of God begins to flow through you and overflows into the lives of others.

John 7:38-39a – “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive:”

Anyone can see the fire but it’s not the fire you see that changes your life, it’s the fire you receive. I grew up Pentecostal and I saw many people baptized in the Holy Ghost, I seen the gifts of the spirit in operation, Sunday, after Sunday. I went to Christian University founded by a Pentecostal denomination. I was taught about the infilling of the Holy Ghost and the gifts, but I never sought this experience for myself. I followed a strict system of do’s and don’ts, but after 20 years in the ministry I fell to drug addiction and alcoholism.   Why? Because moral systems by themselves lack the power to restrain sinful indulgence. Opening of your heart to the inward sanctifying, cleansing, purging fire of God’s presence through the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the only thing that makes you a vessel that is fit to carry the anointing.

It’s not what we say about God that has the power to change lives, it’s the quantity and quality of the presence and character of God that is manifested through us. There has to be a Holy Ghost invasion, before there can be a Holy Ghost powered persuasion!

1 Corinthians 2: 4-5 – “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

The fire of God wants to come into your life and make you ministers of fire.

Isaiah 4:4-5 – “When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defense.”

First the fire to you, and second the fire in you; purging, cleansing, sanctifying, burning up the clutter, the excesses, the selfishness, the sin, habits, addictions, attitudes. God’s fire, the Holy Ghost, works in us to sanctify us and make us worthy vessels to carry the fire to others.

Then the fire through you!  You become that cleansed and purified vessel that the fire can flow through to others.

Many people don’t mind being touched by the fire, as long as they can contain it, or as long as it is controllable. As long as they determine its heat and intensity. But God will never be satisfied just to touch you, he wants to consume you: body, mind, soul, and spirit, the Lord wants it all!

One of the best bible illustrations of this truth is the Foxes on Fire in the book of Judges 15:4-5. Sampson catches three-hundred foxes and sends them out by two’s into the philistine’s fields; the kicker is they have a fire between their tails. At the risk of offending some animal activist, I am sure the fire did not simply give off a pleasant glow as they ran through the philistine’s fields. No my friends, these foxes were on fire! These foxes were changed by the fire, because these foxes were consumed by the fire. When the fire hit the fur these foxes had a mission, their mission was go into all the world and spread the fire. The fire changed them, they were never the same again.

If there was ever a time when the church needed a fresh fire, it’s today. We need to be touched by the fire of the Holy Ghost. We need to allow that fire to consume everything in our lives that hinders the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We need our heads anointed with oil until our cups are running over and that anointing is touching the lives of those around us. We need Holy Ghost revival to consume us, before it will ever wash over our world.