Fresh Fire from Heaven

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Fresh Fire from Heaven; bible study
Topic Started: May 21 2007, 01:57 PM (13 Views)
oceanweed	May 21 2007, 01:57 PM Post #1
Advanced Member Posts: 52 Group: Members Member #85 Joined: February 10, 2007	Fresh Fire from Heaven? Part I Written by: Reinhard Bonnke Tuesday, May 01, 2007 Fresh Fire? Is there really such a thing as the “fresh” fire from heaven? Can fire have a sell-by date? Can it become stale? Can the fires in God’s heart flicker wearily and need stirring up? I cannot imagine anything like that! It would be totally out of character for God. The fire from heaven cannot be second-rate, second hand, worn out; its quality cannot fade. God has only one kind of fire – fire that is always just as if it had been freshly lit with its flames leaping brightly. The fires of God’s heart do not grow tired. God is never old and bored. He never makes do with yesterday’s fire, settling for something shoddy and less than the best. We need to understand that to talk about God is to talk about fire. The Psalmist wrote, “Fire goes before him” (Psalm 97:3) – fire announces His presence like a trumpet call and flames leap up as the ground trembles under His feet. But more than that – “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Instead of indicating “fresh fire,” however, this stresses the ongoing, eternal nature of God’s temperament: a fire that never stops burning. What does fire mean when related to God? For one thing it is a fundamental aspect of His nature – full of a driving purpose, zeal and passion. Whatever God does is characterised by fire, a red-hot burning desire. Nothing He does is ever the result of a casual whim; it is never incidental and is certainly never run-of-the-mill. All His works have the heat and weight of eternity behind them. God’s blessing, for instance, does not come upon us by accident, rather like a stray spark happening to land on us as we stroll by. Make no mistake about it – He knows precisely whom He intends to bless. The Will of God The fire of God is bound up with His will. Now, what do we understand by “God’s will?” Does it mean that God simply makes up His mind to do one thing or another? Many people think it does. They imagine God as an impersonal ruler getting on with the daily routine, the Divine engineer steering and controlling the whole cosmos. To many, God’s will is concerned with infinite space, time and eternity, and has next to nothing to do with them. They think God’s plans and interests are on a scale that all but excludes them. They picture Him administering Creation like a manager sitting behind His great heavenly desk, with no time for the tiny details. The first time God revealed Himself as fire was to Moses at the burning bush. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew God, but not very personally. To them, He was the Most High God who spoke to them but kept His distance. Now God revealed His true nature to Moses; a personal God concerned with people; a God of fire and feeling. When we read the Bible, God is revealed to us in all His multiple manifestations from the very first pages. Genesis tells us about creation and His dealings with half a dozen or so people. However, when God spoke to Moses, He took a new step in showing human beings who He was and gave Moses His name and His identity. This was God coming closer to people than ever before. What is more, God exposed Moses to a new truth about Himself to a central aspect of His character which has not changed down the ages. As the light of the flames in the burning bush lit Moses face, God said, “I have come down to rescue” (Exodus 3:8). That is how we can know Him today and for ever more: as the Deliverer and the Emancipator. Some want to come to God as the Creator and invent their own method of approach, but that will never work. God revealed Himself to us as the God of deliverance and that is how we can know Him. When Jesus came to earth, it was in that specific role; Joseph, His foster father, was told, “You are to give him the name Jesus because he will save (deliver) his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The Eternal Deliverer God’s role as the deliverer of humankind and His fire-like nature cannot be separated. His first appearance as fire was also the first clear revelation of His intention to rescue people. He was about to demonstrate on a vast scale His power to set people free, taking every slave out of Egypt in the nick of time. His fires of deliverance would “burn through” every obstacle in their path. All through time this is the message that God has conveyed to His people. For centuries He told Israel that He was their hope of deliverance: “I am the Lord … your Saviour” (Isaiah 43:3). There was no point looking elsewhere: “I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no saviour” (Isaiah 43:11). We turn the Bible’s pages and the bells chime out, “I have come down to rescue.” God’s bells proclaim freedom, release liberty, and the end of captivity, slavery, and defeat! God did not come down to earth to give us some of His wisdom to impose a set of rules or to impart an ideology. He came as fire. Not as a dispassionate thought, a philosophy, or a theory slowly distilled over the years, but burning, passionate, determined to intervene actively in human affairs so as to set people free – and on a scale never dreamed of before. The slaves in Egypt had no conception of the dimensions of what God was going to for them. God meant the world to know who He was. He did not release the people of Israel quietly, getting them to creep past the guards, or hurrying them breathlessly from cover to cover like shadows in the night. He did it flamboyantly, in a way no one could ever forget. The God of the burning bush outwitted the most powerful man on earth, Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, with his panoply of military units, spearmen and mighty swordsmen all equipped with a vast array of shining weaponry. However, God tackled more than just the power of Egypt. His intention was to strike at the spiritual heart of the nation: “I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt,” he said (Exodus 12:12). God turned His hand against everything the Egyptians worshipped. He covered the country in thick darkness so that the stars were blotted out. He turned the river Nile, their great god, to blood. He infested their homes with the scarab beetle, said to bring “good luck.” The God of fire swept across the land in awful lightning and hail and destroyed the Egyptians’ orchards completely. When Pharaoh dared to challenge Him further, God rolled back the very sea and pushed an engulfing wave across the military ranks of Israel’s pursuers. Those unfortunate soldiers were never seen again. That is the God of the burning bush, the God of fire and passion, full of fury at the sight of evil and oppression, hating any kind of bondage, whether it comes from national and political systems that crush the lives of His creatures, or from evils that contrive to gain power over people’s personal lives. The fires of God rage against the bondage of sin, deception, ignorance, superstition, and everything which is devilish and subjects men and women to tyranny and fear. Three times in the Bible we read “The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this” (2 Kings 19:31, Isaiah 9:7, 37:32). An Unbreakable Covenant That God is still God today. When He told Moses about His plan to rescue the people of Israel from Egypt, He said, “I will” four times. Indeed, the Divine “I will” is a refrain heard a great number of times in the book of Exodus. And no one can stop what God sets out to do. When God made a covenant with Abraham, Abraham laid out his sacrificial offering according to the customs he knew and God passed between the pieces of the animals as a “smoking brazier with a blazing torch” declaring what He would do (Genesis 15:9-17). It was a unilateral covenant, depending on nobody but God. That covenant was unbreakable, made by God and sealed by fire. Man was not a co-signatory and could therefore do nothing to break God’s covenant. However, back to Moses and God’s plan for the people of Israel held captive in Egypt. God told Moses, “I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that he will let you go” (Exodus 3:19-20). God negated Pharaoh’s negative! It is who wills that matters, not merely the will. He is the God who never hesitates but goes right through to do what He said He would do. The Bible presents a picture of God as He really is. No other picture is true. He is not just a force behind the world, an awesome impersonal power that sweeps in majesty over everything, without giving the slightest thought to human concerns. Although God’s covenant was a unilateral declaration of intent, that “I will” pact was made with another person and for the good of those to whom the covenant was to apply. The will of God is the desire of God. In everyday use “I will” can imply cold decision, purpose or intention, but in Scripture those two words must be understood more dynamically, invested with the fire or passion of God. It is a warm, personal assurance that what is announced will actually take place. However, God is not a despot. He is not simply bent on getting His own way; He works for the good of mankind. That is made clear in the moving phrase “The good will of him who dwelt in the bush” (Deuteronomy 33:16 KJV). The word translated “good will” means “delight,” “desire” or “favour,” which is why God’s will for us is described in Romans 12:2 as “good, pleasing, and perfect.” The Scriptures are God’s counsel, will, and desire. When the apostle Paul said farewell to his friends in Ephesus, he stated, “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27). The flames of God’s presence in the bush made the area too holy for Moses to tread on but the bush became incandescent with the guarantee of God’s good will. That same fire burns in the pages of the Bible. It is not a book of good advice, good morals, or a student’s text book on how to live; it is ablaze with good will for mankind.



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