Fire Power: Part 2

So I have just come from Sharers of the Word, a praise and worship/charismatic prayer group here on campus...and I thought it would be relevant to sort of take a look at some practical applications of what I talked about earlier today. If you haven't already, I'd strongly encourage you to check out part 1 (not that I'm biased or anything).

This will be like the "real world application" of sorts, along with a great experience I had of this first-hand not too long after publishing Part 1.

What does it mean to be "on fire with the Spirit"? Is it a lifestyle? A feeling? A burden? Tonight, I saw the Spirit as bright. I saw someone who, up until now, had been closed to a lot of what God was trying to say. She didn't buy in to anything we were doing...until she experienced it for real. You know with Christmas we've been hearing a particular passage a lot in reference to the people who were around two thousand years ago at the time of the Nativity: "The people in darkness have seen a great light" (Isaiah 9:2). 

Isn't that beautiful? The people in darkness. It doesn't say "the sinners" or "the unworthy" as much as both of those are painfully true. It simply says "the people in darkness" and then immediately contrasts that with "great light". Not any light. A great light. Tonight I saw that transformation take place in a big way in this person, but in some way in all of us. 

Because the thing about night is that our eyes adjust to it. If we wake up in the middle of the night, we can see what's around us where, just after turning out the lights, we would stumble. We never really see how dark our world is...until somebody turns on the lights. 

That is not to say that anybody who has not had this "transformation" is in darkness...at least, they're not the only ones in darkness. Because, as we heard tonight, "From his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace." It's not that we didn't have grace before...it's that God saw that and build us up even further. We look back and see how we used to be and call it darkness. It didn't feel like it then, but compared to the light, everything else is dark. 

So, what am I to do with this light of mine? I'm gonna let it shine.

Sometimes things are cliche for a reason.

You may not always have that "warm fuzzy" feeling of being "on fire with the Spirit". But it's always there. The Spirit didn't leave the apostles just because the tongues of fire vanished. The Spirit is always with us. "Behold, I am with you always, until the end of time," (Matthew 20:28). 

That's my challenge for you today. Embrace the light you have received and let it show. Don't be ashamed to let people know you are Christian. Peter rejected Jesus in front of regular people on the street. "Do not be afraid." 

Take that fire and use it to brighten the world around you. Fire spreads. Ignite others. Soon, we really will "set the world ablaze"