The Bible is full of fire. God's first act in creation was to gather together gasses and set them on fire by declaring, "Let there be light" (Gen. 1:3). When all is said and done, God's final act will be accomplished with fire. All history is thereby bracketed with the fire of God. It started with creative fire and it will end with consuming fire. From the first to the last pages of the Bible, people met God in the flames of His transforming presence.

I want you to envision your life being set on fire by God. Imagine falling in love with Jesus all over again. Spending extended time with Him is the highlight of your day. You enter God's living room and sit with Jesus, gazing in wonder and awe. Your heartbeat quickens. You can't help but smile.

You read the Bible and it is alive. Fresh ideas are popping. At times while you're reading, it's as if you are looking into the face of God, beholding His character, His beauty, His virtue. At other times you seem to be looking into a mirror reflecting a crystal-clear image of yourself.

In the light of such intimacy, you suddenly realize that God has been reading your mail. Oh no, you panic, I have been found! There is nowhere to hide! Bone-crushing conviction sets in. Face to face with God's impeccable moral virtue, you shrink back, feeling like a dirty rotten scoundrel. In contrition you openly admit your failures and beg for His mercy.

God responds. Instantly He floods your soul with His unconditional love, with the convincing awareness that there is nothing you could ever do to make Him love you less and nothing you could ever do to make Him love you more. There's no need to hide.

In the act of seeking God, you realize He's been seeking you. While reading the Bible, you discover it's been reading you. You find God to be all He claims to be and yourself to be all you are intended to be.

You are filled with the hope that your life is changing for the good. Twisted, selfish attitudes and self-destructive habits are being rooted out, and for the first time you believe that the Christian life is actually doable. You feel empowered by a new confidence. Your prayers are alive. You receive a particular God-assignment that will impact your world.

Now imagine being part of a church family experiencing the same awe in God's tangible presence. He permeates your gatherings like the aroma of homemade bread. Friendships become vulnerable and transparent. People come out from hiding. Prayer meetings are standing room only. Relationships are healed. Lives are transformed. Your whole neighborhood stands up and takes notice. A lead story about your city in USA Today reports that crime and poverty are way down, prisons are vacant, industry is up, and churches are packed to the rafters.

You may be thinking, Well, that all sounds good, but is it realistic? Could it ever happen to me? Could it really happen in my family and in my church?

Let me assure you that all of this—and so much more—is possible. It's what happens when God the Holy Spirit makes Christ known to His people. The picture I have just painted is the normal result when God shows up. There is nothing unrealistic or super-spiritual about it.

Countless times in Bible days, God revealed His flaming, manifest presence to His people. Fasten your seat belt; let's take a look.

God On Fire

1. God the Father On Fire. When the living God wants to communicate His presence tangibly to ordinary people like you and me, it's surprising how often He uses fire imagery. The well respected German Bible scholar Gerhard Kittel writes, "In almost all the Old Testament theophonies, fire appears as a way of representing the unapproachable sanctity and overpowering glory of Yahweh." [1]

Both the Old and New Testaments declare, "God is a consuming fire" (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29). When Moses dared to ascend the flaming mountain to receive God's ten laws, God's fire seemed to blaze out of control. Bright yellow DANGER: KEEP OUT! tape was wrapped around every tree and stone. Lightning flashed. Thunder roared. The people trembled.

"Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder" (Ex. 19:12). This was no weenie roast. It was a roaring inferno. The God of fire was showing Himself, and His people trembled in their boots.

As New Testament believers, we realize that this Old Testament event is not a passé moment in a dispensational economy. The writer of the book of Hebrews makes permanent application to every believer: "Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our 'God is a consuming fire'" (Heb. 12:28-29).

2. God the Son On Fire. As we have discovered, fire is the manifest presence of God. It comes as no surprise then that Christ, who came as the embodiment of God, is frequently revealed as being on fire. In fact, in the book of Revelation, we see Jesus on fire from head to foot. His eyes flash like laser beams, His feet glow like molten bronze, His hands hold flaming embers, and His face beams like the noonday sun.

When Christ declared, "I am the light of the world" (Jn. 9:5), essentially He said, "I am the fire of the world. I am the One who brings the illumination of true wisdom, the One who dispels spiritual darkness and ignorance, and the One who enables people to know the living and true God." The Bible says, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men" (Jn. 1:4).

Jesus is also the light of heaven. There will be no sun there because the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ will be all the light we'll need. It's fair to say that heaven is filled with the fire of God's manifest presence.

John the Baptizer saw in Jesus the ability to lead people into an encounter with the fire of God's tangible presence: "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matt. 3:11). What a fitting summary of Jesus' ministry! It's obvious from the Baptizer's description that he anticipated Jesus administering this baptism of fire not to a select few but to all His followers—including you and me.

3. God the Holy Spirit On Fire. It's remarkable how often fire is used in the Bible to describe both the Person of the Holy Spirit and His activity. It was promised that Jesus would "baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire," and on the day of Pentecost, God no sooner poured out His Spirit on the praying believers than they were covered with what appeared to be flaming headbands (see Acts 2:1-3).

The apostle Paul warned, "Do not put out the Spirit's fire" (1 Thess. 5:19). This strong statement presupposes that the ongoing fire of God's Spirit is already active within the life of every believer. We do not need to earn it, beg God for it, or somehow fan it into flame through our own effort. The Holy Spirit is already stoking the fire of His presence in each of our lives. At the same time, I must quickly add that this verse reminds us of the grave reality that it is possible for any of us to extinguish God's fire by refusing to obey the Holy Spirit's daily promptings.

God's Word on Fire 

Not only is God on fire, but when He speaks, His words are like flames of fire. The prophet Jeremiah used the word fire forty-two times: thirty-eight times in the book that bears his name and four times in Lamentations. He wrote, "'Is not my word like fire,' declares the Lord" (Jer. 23:29). He described the effect that God's words had on him as fire burning in his bones. When he preached, it was as if the Word of God came from his mouth like flames shooting from a propane torch.

The Bible is full of others who met God in His flaming Word. Ezekiel could be called "the prophet of fire," because he used fire forty-five times. He, like Isaiah, received his call in the fire. He saw fire between the wheels, fire in the house, fire on stones, fire in Egypt, fire in Zoan, and fire in Magog. Because these prophets each declared, "Thus says the Lord," it's no surprise they would know firsthand the fire of God's tangible presence.

The other prophets' messages are peppered with fire as well. Daniel saw God's eyes like fire. Hosea saw God's coming inferno. Joel saw God's fiery presence before and behind God's people, hemming them in on every side. The short book of Amos uses the word fire nine times, predominantly referring to God's radical day of reckoning. Obadiah saw God's fire in the middle of His people.

Micah saw the mountains melt like wax before God's fire. Nahum saw God's fiery reckoning. Zephaniah saw the fire of God's jealousy. Zechariah identified the link between the manifest presence of God's fire like a surrounding blazing wall, and the revelation of God's glory within. Malachi compared God to the refiner's fire used to purge, purify, and strengthen metals.

The Fire of Holiness

Now that we have surveyed the biblical explanation of God's flaming presence, we want to zoom in on some of the specific ways God's people encounter Him in the fire. When God's people are initially introduced to His blazing manifest presence, they normally fall on their faces, come under bone-crushing conviction of sin, or disintegrate. One thing is sure: Their lives are never again the same. For an example, let's investigate the prophet Isaiah.

In the beginning of his book (6:1-7), Isaiah described his call to follow and serve God. "I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted," he said, "and the train of his robe filled the temple." Angels screamed "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory" at such a decibel that the doorposts rattled, the bedrock cracked, and the temple where Isaiah was praying was suddenly filled with smoke.When he saw the molten lava of God's all-consuming holiness, he started to unravel. "Woe to me!" he cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

Literally, Isaiah yelled, "I am disintegrating." Who wouldn't suffer a meltdown when confronting God's manifest presence? In response to Isaiah's repentance and open confession of sin, "one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, 'See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.'"

Is it any wonder that spontaneous combustion would take place inside Isaiah's soul? He not only encountered the flaming coal of God's holiness; the fire touching his lips forever changed him. It's not surprising that after encountering God like that, Isaiah used the word fire thirty-four times in his prophetic book. He went on to predict that the Lord will come with fire and that everyone will one day recognize Him as a consuming fire.

Kittel suggests using Fire as a name for Yahweh because it "denotes the majestic being of God embracing both grace and judgment simultaneously." [2] Numerous other Bible references to fire demonstrate the cleansing effect of God's manifest presence. It is impossible to get intimate with God without experiencing a similar purging process.

The Fire of Intimacy

Once the sin within us is effectively dealt with, God welcomes us into a level of intimacy with Him we never dreamed possible, and our prayer lives blossom. We see an example of this in how God met with Moses.

God gave Moses explicit details for setting up the Tent of Meeting. This was, after all, the place where Israel would encounter God. He mandated, "The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out" (Lev. 6:12). The permanent presence of fire was a critical element of the Tent of Meeting. The perpetual flame vividly communicated God's purifying, penetrating, passionate presence with the people.

Not only did God mandate fire on the altar, He also instructed Aaron to burn incense every morning and evening "so incense will burn regularly before the Lord for the generations to come" (Ex. 30:8). Bible scholars suggest that the smoke of the fires was a constant reminder of the rising prayers of God's people, ever ascending before their Lord. This is a vivid picture of prayer on fire. David echoed this picture when he prayed, "May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice" (Ps. 141:2).

The New Testament also refers to the incense of prayer that rises continuously before God. When John glimpsed heaven in the book of Revelation, he saw "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" (Rev. 5:8).

Like our prayers, incense is flammable but not self-combustible. Just as incense requires fire to burn, so prayer requires the Holy Spirit to penetrate God's presence and rouse His attention. These Spirit-combustible prayers are guarded in golden bowls in heaven until just the right moment when God will take hold of those bowls and toss them back down on the earth as reverse thunder.

The Fire for Service

Another aspect of encountering God's presence is that we are empowered to serve Him. Many great leaders were launched on a world-impact mission by the flaming God. The who's-who of notable fire-encounterers includes Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, to mention only a few. But the trump card is seen in the Upper Room where God's blazing presence transformed the early disciples.

The most far-reaching mission ever launched was on the line. Essentially Jesus had said, "You will go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, but first stay and pray. As you pray I will clothe you with the fire of my fullness. Then I will launch you with supernatural booster rockets into history-shaping ministry" (see Matt. 28:19; Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4,8). For ten solid days, the 120 believers joined together in concerted, focused prayer. Like children appealing to their father about a promise he had made, they persistently reminded God what Jesus had guaranteed them.

It is reported that at Kennedy Space Center there is a single, enormous launching pad from which all space shuttles take off. The disciples knelt on a similar launching pad. Jesus promised them a significant mission and a sizable payload, saying, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

Ten. Nine. Eight. "They all joined together constantly in prayer" (Acts 1:14). Seven. Six. Five. We have ignition! Four. Three. Two. One. "Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2). We have liftoff! The early church met God in the fire, and they were launched into world-transforming ministry.

Instantly the fire of God's presence drew a crowd. Because of the feast of Pentecost, "there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven" (Acts 2:5). There were people from as far as Cappadocia and Pontus 900 miles to the north, from Libya 1,200 miles to the south in Africa, from Arabia 1,000 miles to the east, and from Rome to the west.

Peter was empowered to preach powerfully to them because of the Holy Spirit's fire. Previously he had been a fearful and defeated man who had distanced himself from Christ by denying his Master three times. Now he proclaimed God's Word in a way that penetrated people's hearts as if he were wielding a flame-thrower. In God's cleansing presence, the crowd was cut to the heart and cried out, "What shall we do?" Peter's answer was straightforward: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38-39). On that day 3,000 people converted to Christ, were baptized, and received the Holy Spirit.

The empowerment for mission came because of the fire of God's manifest presence. Immediately Peter made it clear that the promise of Holy Spirit fire was not for a single, isolated dispensation, but rather for all generations, including our own. "The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off," he proclaimed, "for all whom the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:39). All God's people would now bear His flame.

Flame Bearers

The seven historic churches addressed in the book of Revelation are each identified by the word picture of a lampstand, or, more accurately, flame bearer. It was not the lampstand's responsibility to produce the flame but simply to carry it permanently so that it gave light to all in the house. Similarly every local church is assigned the distinct role to be a flame bearer of God's manifest presence.

Jesus told His followers, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.... In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matt. 5:14, 16).

Allow me to restate those familiar words: You are fire carriers in your generation. As you allow Me to manifest My presence in your daily life, it will be obvious to all that your lifestyle reflects My character. When they recognize My presence in you, they will praise your Father in heaven.

Jesus expects fire to be a way of life for all of us.

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[1] Gerhard Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 935.

[2] Kittel, vol. 6, 937.

 

From chapter 2, pp. 27-39, of Prayer on Fire, © 2006 by Fred Hartley III, published by NavPress (www.navpress.com).