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The Fire

 I will never be convicted of being a great prayer warrior, but I also truly do speak with the Holy Spirit, and He speaks with me. One thing you come to realize is that you can go deeper than the plain words of Scripture, but nothing true will ever be said without them. So there I was, reading and meditating on Luke 24, the part where the two disciples walked along the road to Emmaus. Remember how sad they were? Then Jesus comes up, playing a little coy, and asks them what they were talking about. The rough equivalent of a response was, "What, have you been living under a rock?" (Well, not exactly, but that's funny.) So they're explaining to Our Lord what he's allegedly missed--quite amusing, really--and then he tells them they don't get it. "And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them all the Scriptures concerning himself." We all know that was a sermon to end them all. Remember how they reacted? "Did our hearts not burn within us, while he talked to us on the road?"

I got around to saying that the great gift of this Age of the Holy Spirit is that our hearts burn, but we need not be sad first. That is, they didn't quite believe it, when he told them he must suffer, die, and be raised again. They were shaken out of a certain disbelief, when he revealed himself in the breaking of the bread. This seemed to happen a lot: unbelief, interrupted by delirious joy. Then I remembered the burning bush: aflame, but not consumed. He seemed to say that there need not be sadness now, at least in a certain way. Sadness and tragedy are so human, so common. Those things cannot touch the joy which comes from God, even so. A small paraphrase from Isaiah 43 says, "When you walk through the fire, you'll not be burned. And the flames will not consume you." I realized this was actually about the Holy Spirit. I am like the burning bush: on fire, but not consumed. It's a bold thing, to ask God to light you on fire, so to speak.

This wasn't exactly how I thought calling down fire from Heaven would go, but that's exactly what it is. We have met the enemy, and they are us. Maybe we are purged, purified, but still not destroyed. It will never be easy to surrender everything to God. Carrie Underwood can sing about it, but in a certain sense, Jesus taking the wheel is only putative, until we know the Spirit's power.

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