May 14
Putting Out the Spirit’s Fire
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil. ––1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
Picture a warm fire and imagine its glow and its radiating heat bringing all around it calm and comfort. I picture a campfire at night at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, snow-topped peaks towering above with the moonlight illuminating their raw power. Outside the fire circle it’s cold—there’s a chill biting into your back even as your face and hands are warm.
If you can visualize that picture you are getting the experience that the Holy Spirit wants to bring to you and others through you. Now go back to that fire and imagine some dude douses your fire with a five gallon bucket of water. Suddenly the chill of the High Sierra night air creeps down your back, and into your hands and feet. What feelings would that bring up in you––what would you say, what would you do?
When we look at this scripture passage from 1 Thessalonians 5 and surrounding verses carefully, we see three ways in which the fire of God is stoked or extinguished in our life. The fire stokers would include all expressions of worship, talking to God in all matters and in all moments of life, and an attitude of gratitude. These act like a highly flammable spiritual accelerant with your journey with God, and the Holy Spirit will prompt you to practice all three as a way of life to help to keep his fire burning hot within you and through you.
On the other side, the fire extinguishers would include an uncooperative spirit, an unteachable spirit, and an easily diverted spirit. Instead of recognizing the spiritual war for our soul and filtering what we let into our mind, we adopt cultural ways of thinking and blend them with our faith. We are all tempted in these ways, otherwise the admonitions wouldn’t be there. Every day we will either be a fire stoker or a fire extinguisher of His work.
Father, thank You so much for the power of choice; thank You that my mind doesn’t control me, but You have allowed me to control my mind.
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Thank you for putting this together. One thing I felt the Lord testing was the believe of what walking in the spirit may look like. For many years I have had an expectation that I will feel warmth all around me or the fire of the spirit isn’t present. That all or nothing view. However through this devotional I am pondering on the idea that like a fire in the wilderness, we are able to experience the warmth of the spirit in part of our lives. May not be the whole body, but the spirit warms us in the needed parts as it sees best. It gives me something more to be grateful for, and worship our Lord for that warmth I get to have while going through the wilderness of life.
Feel free to drop insight, or push back.