Living in the Light of Your Own Fire

But watch out, you who live in your own light and warm yourselves by your own fires. This is the reward you will receive from me: You will soon fall down in great torment. – Isaiah 50:11 NLT

Do not add a thing to what I command you nor subtract from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I am delivering to you. – Deuteronomy 4:2 NET

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. – Revelation 22: 18-19 NASB

 

Regular readers here know that I’m not a fan of protracted illustrations which can be the hallmark of many devotional articles, not to mention some sermons. But this one intrigued me because of the scripture reference to which it pointed.

This is our third time at the blog of Apostolic Pentecostal Church in Bloomington, Illinois. This time the author is not named in this 2020 article. Clicking the title which follows will take you where this first appeared.

Kindled Fire

At a young age, I remember a teacher taking my class on a fieldtrip. Part of our excursion was studying how to become “one” with nature. The practicality of the lesson was learning survival skills, should we ever get lost in the wild. (I secretly wondered who was dumb enough to voluntarily come close enough to nature to begin with to even worry about this.)

Step one? Creating a fire. Somehow, we were supposed to accomplish this task without a lighter or a match. Even as a child, I was seriously doubting the intelligence of my teacher as my entire class (save yours truly) began to furiously rub sticks together in hopes of creating a spark.

I surveyed the scene. Alarm bells rang inside my head in vehement candor as the words of Smokey the Bear echoed in my ears: Smokey’s friends don’t play with matches. Only you can prevent forest fires. We were in a forest. There were dry pine needles all around us (perfect for kindling). And, there were dozens of kids, determined to produce a flame—some of whom were already experts in the task from hours of Boy-Scouting. They had the badge to prove it.

“We’re going to start a fire,” I exasperated to my teacher. Humor then alarm crested her eyes as the potential reality of the situation set in. I don’t exactly recall what transpired after that moment, but we also learned the importance of fire safety that day. There was a sure danger in kindling our own fire.

It’s not an everyday occurrence that we risk kindling a fire in our natural lives, unless you’re an avid camper, candle enthusiast, or in the habit of leaving on heat-generating appliances. But, we do run this risk daily in our spiritual lives.

Listen carefully, all you who kindle your own fire [devising your own man-made plan of salvation], who surround yourselves with torches, walk by the light of your [self-made] fire and among the torches that you have set ablaze. But this you will have from My hand: You will lie down in [a place of] torment (Isaiah 50:11, AMP).

Scripture warns us not to kindle our own fires. What does this mean? The Amplified version of the Bible explains this well: when we create own man-made plan of salvation. When does this happen? When we add to, take away from, misconstrue, etc. what God has already written in His Word (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:18–19).

We see the gravity of this warning in Leviticus 10 when Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, let God’s holy fire burn out in the Tabernacle. They took censers and put their own fire and incense therein and offered it (strange fire) before the Lord. The end of the story? God took them out because they let go of the original, pure source of God’s presence and offered something man-made, and therefore, corrupted.

It’s easy to come up with excuses as to why we shouldn’t manifest our own fire. We’d be creatively hindered. It’s too hard to keep the original source burning. Fire is too difficult to maintain. We like the convenience of “quick” fire. Heat from other fires may burn just as brightly and keep us just as warm. Regardless of our excuses, we must be vigilant toward what we set ablaze in our lives.

Smokey the Bear’s saying is true for our spiritual walk. Only you can prevent forest fires. Kindling our own fire is a choice. Abstaining from it is a personal manifesto and moral we must hold true. We need to keep the true fire of the Lord burning in our lives and never allow it to burn out and/or seek our own kindling. Desire the fire, but desire the right fire. There is One who has promised to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire (Luke 3:16). It’s God. It’s the Word. And, His name is Jesus (John 1:1–14).

Putting Spin on Scripture to Mean What We Want it to Mean

It’s been our custom to twice a year visit Christ Almighty, the blog of K.W. Leslie and again today I got totally absorbed in reading a number of excellent articles. He has done his own translation which he uses and in recent articles has explained the purpose in doing so. But because his articles are quite long, today we’re going to just use a small portion from the middle of a larger article. I’ll explain more in italics below. So needless to say, you’re especially encouraged today to click the title below.

Christianism

[He begins by explaining that the article is about “Christianists,” people whose spiritual life is not informed by the teaching of Jesus, but rather, “they take whatever they’re doing, slap a Christian label on it, and claim it’s legitimately Christian.” For the first section of the article, he discusses, “Christianists who are honestly mistaken. I give most people the benefit of the doubt.” But then…]

…Then there’s the other group: The people who actually know what Jesus teaches, but go out of their way to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate his words till they mean what they want. They figure their views are more important than Jesus’s. These would be legitimately deceptive people. Liars. Antichrists. Leading the crowd astray for their own gain.

Other than the devil, certain cult leaders, certain politicians, false prophets, and their flunkies, there aren’t many in this category. But they do exist. They’re a much smaller group. They’re not wandering sheep; they’re wolves. Jesus described ’em like yea:

John 10.7-10 KWL

7B “Amen amen! I promise you I’m the sheep-gate.

8 Everybody who climbs in past me is a thief and predator—but the flock won’t listen to them.

9 I’m the gate. When anyone enters through me, they’ll be saved.

They’ll enter, they’ll exit, they’ll find pasture.

10 The thief doesn’t enter other than to steal, murder, and destroy.

I came so they can have life—and have more than they ever expected.”

The flock, Jesus’s real followers, recognize these particular Christianists are con artists, and won’t follow. But others, those who aren’t really following Jesus, don’t know what he teaches, don’t notice any of the Holy Spirit’s red flags, easily fall for their false teachings. And off they go together.

We can debate (and we have) about whether wayward Christianists are real Christians, or whether they ever were. I’d like to think a lot of ’em are Christian; just wrong in some areas. Sometimes a lot of areas.

’Cause I grew up among Christianists. In high school I attended a politically conservative church who regularly mixed up our party’s teachings with Jesus’s. Didn’t know any better. All the Christians we knew were good conservatives. And if they weren’t conservative, we’d doubt their salvation.

Round election time we’d get “voter guides,” produced by party members, which included a little checklist to show whether each candidate was “Christian” enough. What they thought of abortion, or capital punishment, or drugs, or taxes, or government expansion. One of the checkboxes, fr’instance, told us whether the candidates were for or against gun control.

Now, what’s Jesus’s position on gun control? Well there were no guns back then. But we know what Jesus said about other arms. Namely the μάχαιρα/máhaira, a long work knife which is properly a machete, but the KJV calls it a “sword.” There’s pro:

Luke 22.36-38 KWL

36 Jesus told them, “But now you who have a coin purse: Pick it, and your wallet, up.

You who don’t: Sell your robe. Buy a machete.

37 For I tell you this scripture must be fulfilled by me: ‘He was figured among the lawless.’ Is 53.12

It’s about me; it has a purpose.”

38 They said, “Master look: Two machetes here.”

He told them, “That’ll do.”

And there’s con.

Matthew 26.51-52 KWL

51 Look, one of Jesus’s followers stretched out his hand, drew his machete,

struck the head priest’s slave, and cut off his ear.

52 Then Jesus told him, “Put your machete back where it goes!

Everybody who takes up arms will be destroyed by them.”

We can debate the interpretation of these passages… and no doubt most of our interpretations will fall in line with our already-existing politics. If you love guns, you’re all in favor of selling your robe to buy one. If you don’t, it’s all “live by the sword, die by the sword.”

I myself would argue there’s not enough in either passage to come up with Jesus’s gun policy. He has no position. It’s wholly a partisan issue. I think both sides make reasonable arguments. Even so, conservatives assume Jesus is against gun control; progressives assume he’s for it; both pick the sides they’d already choose without any input from Jesus. And both commit the Christianist sin of claiming it was all Jesus’s idea.

Tell ’em they’re wrong, and they’ll object. But their main objection isn’t just politics. It’s something much deeper, and more corrupt, in human nature: We humans don’t wanna be wrong! We don’t want to think of ourselves that way. Nor be publicly corrected for wrongdoing. Wrongness is bad. And we’re not bad people—we’re good Christians. All our fellow Christians say so, and believe the very same things we do. We can’t all be wrong.

But we are. And aren’t gonna grow in Christ till we realize it…

[…continue reading here…]