Fire-building 101

As a single parent, my mother convinced the local Boy Scout leader to let me join his troop even though, at ten years old, I was a year too young. That experience had a tremendous influence on my life as, during my three years as a scout, I learned something about what it means to be a man. More than just developing skills like how to use my jeans as a flotation device (great party trick, by the way), being a Boy Scout also convinced me that I could participate in the world.

But we did learn skills, another of which was how to build a fire. Anyone who’s seen the reality TV show Survivor knows at least two things about fire—it’s a fundamental tool for human survival AND it’s hard to start one without a flame. Some of the show’s most desperate moments even occur when participants experience life without the energy of a fire.

God also knows the life-sustaining capacity of fire, of course, and so it’s not surprising that He blessed His people, Israel, with it when they needed it most. As they fled from the Egyptians in Exodus, He used a “a pillar of fire (as a) light at night…that never left its place” (13:23-24) and to “throw the Egyptian forces into confusion” (14:24).

Being concerned with our spiritual condition as well as our physical, God also applied fire’s “life-sustaining capacity” to that. In Leviticus 6:12, He told the people that the altar fire where they performed sacrifices “must be kept burning; it must not go out,” and then said it again in the very next verse! (Spoiler alert: They kept it lit until the Babylonians took them captive 900 years later. I’m glad I didn’t throw that bucket of water!) In that same verse (12), God also prescribed that “every morning the priest will burn wood on the fire.” He didn’t tell them the kind of wood to use but they knew, maybe because they’d been boy scouts, that it had to be clean and burnable. The wood from an olive tree or a grapevine did not burn well, for example, and wet, rotten or infested wood could easily go out. No, they had to use intentionally chosen and clean fuel.

“Intentionally chosen and clean fuel” for the fire... that’s a message for us, too. You see, the “pillar of fire” from which “the Lord looked down” (Exodus 14:24) to guide and protect the Israelites is the same “tongues like flames of fire that… rested on (the disciples when) they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3-4, CSB). The Holy Spirit in the “pillar of fire” in Leviticus and as the “flames of fire” in Acts is the same Holy Spirit that fills each of us.

The message, as you’ve already guessed, is this—Having been filled by the Holy Spirit’s “flames of fire,” it’s up to us to keep the fire burning as much as it was up to those priests in Leviticus. But if we can’t use wood on a spiritual fire, what do we use to keep it burning? Ummm, “intentionally chosen and clean fuel.” (See that little bow being neatly tied?)

No, our spiritual fire doesn’t burn wood like that altar fire. Instead, it’s fueled in several ways, like by our service, study, prayer, worship, fellowship, etc…, and engaging in those is the “intentionally chosen” part of the fuel equation. The “clean fuel” part is the heart with which we do them, that is, a heart that loves God before any other and our neighbors before ourselves. It is an obedient heart with a love that is not “wet, or rotted, or infested.”

I can just hear an old Jewish rabbi asking rhetorically, “Who says that’s not a good message?” No one, perhaps, but “good messages” aren’t usually complete without their contrast, which here is what’s at risk by letting our spiritual fire go out. We might ask, “Wouldn’t God just relight it?” Well, He could, of course, but only a fool loves that assurance. No, I think the moment we extinguish the Holy Spirit’s “flames of fire” in us (by not keeping it lit), our eternal souls get acquainted with another fiery fate Jesus warned of in His conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount:

“A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire… Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord,’… and I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME’” (Matthew 7:18-23).

I don’t know about you… No, wait, I DO know about you! Neither of us want to call out to Him, “Lord, Lord,” while pointing at artificial gas logs we’ve installed to replace the Holy Spirit’s “flames of fire,” just because they’re easier to keep lit. As nice as they look, they don’t fool anyone. Even worse, they also emit poisonous gases. Those gases are vented out of home fireplaces but, as cosmetic replacements for our spiritual fire, their deadly emissions vent from us and endanger the eternal lives of those around us, including our family and friends. That is a heavy risk!

Not all of us were Boy Scouts, but we can still adopt the beginning of the oath they recite every week: “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God…” And like Boy Scouts, we know how to keep the Fire in us burning.