Fast 40: Practicing the Ancient Spiritual Discipline of Lentಮಾದರಿ

Fire is fascinating, but I think we take fire for granted. How many of us notice the sun each day? That blazing ball in the sky holds our galaxy together. In fact, without the fire of the sun, nothing on earth would be alive. Our planet would be as barren as the moon. In the same way, the Christian life cannot survive without the fire of the Holy Spirit. As the Salvation Army sings, "It's fire we want, for fire we plead, the fire will meet our every need."

In Scripture, God is very rarely defined in a single phrase. In 1 John 4:8, it says, "God is love," but long before that passage was written, Israel only knew that God was fire. Moses wrote: "The Lord your God is a consuming fire" (Deuteronomy 4:24). In the Old Testament, it was fire that guarded Eden, fire that spoke to Moses from a bush, fire that led Israel by night, fire that descended into the temple from heaven, and fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

But in the New Testament, we are taught the revelation that God's fire is simply the effect of His love. Romans 5:5 says, "The love of God is poured out upon us by the Holy Spirit," and in Acts 2:3, it says that the Holy Spirit descended as "fire" upon the Church. So when we receive the Holy Spirit, we are baptized into a holy love—which forms a holy fire within us. And that fire not only holds the galaxy of our heart together but shines a ray of light that turns barrenness into fruitfulness.