BY GREG CRUM

“Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12:28-29

Here in the book of Hebrews we read of our God being a consuming fire. Think about that for a moment. Pretty ominous, right? The Almighty, the One that we must stand before and give account of our lives to, is a consuming or engulfing fire. What’s even more ominous is that it’s God the Holy Spirit that is providing this character description. Why would God refer to Himself as such? What’s He trying to tell us here?

Now, we all know a bit about fire, and most people realize how destructive fire can be. It can destroy structures it took years to build in mere minutes. Conversely, most of us realize how beneficial fire can be as well. There’s no modern civilization, no thriving for humanity, without fire.

Benefits? Sure, two of the most obvious are warmth and light. I mean, is there a greater pleasure than getting warm on a cold day? Arguably not.

More importantly though, at least for our thoughts concerning Hebrews 12:29, fire offers us the benefit of light. This is an ancient use of fire that we often overlook due to our modern alternatives, but, historically, one of the most important benefits of fire is its production of light.

Okay, great, fire produces light. Why is that important? What’s the spiritual significance? First, throughout the Bible God equates Himself to light, to the point that Jesus is called “The Light.” So, there must be great significance to it, right? There is, and we begin to see this significance when we start to think about what light does for us.

Now, there are a host of physical benefits of light. We’ll not delve into that, but the research is out there. Instead, let’s think of the most practical use of light—its ability to allow us to see those things that are around us. Drop something of value in a dark place. What do we do? Get a flashlight! Now we can see clearly where it landed. Doing some deep cleaning? I dare you to get some better lighting on and around the area. Didn’t know it was that dirty until you did, did you? In fact, many things look clean until you get better lighting focused on the item in question.

So, natural light helps us to better see the environment around us. Spiritual light, the Light of God, the nature of God that is the consuming fire, does the same. The fire of God brings light into our lives that allows us to see how things really are in and around us. It brings a reality check! We see how things really are, and can motivate us to make changes and clean things up, or get things out of us that need gone.

Brothers and sisters, for these reasons we need to embrace God’s light and invite His consuming fire to burn in us! In John 3 we read that Jesus came as the light of the world, but man rejected that light. Why? Because light exposes darkness and these people loved dark ways. Later in John 8, we see that if we are going to follow Jesus we are going to have to live in the light. In fact, in I John 1:5-7 it’s revealed that walking in the dark is equated with an absence of fellowship with Jesus.

We want to have a thriving relationship with Jesus, don’t we? Well, if that’s the case, we need to embrace God’s fire and the light it shines into our lives. We can’t be afraid of exposure. So what if it shows that we need to change some things, or a lot of things? If that’s the case, it’s not for our condemnation, it’s for our safety. Those who persist in dark ways yield power to Satan over their lives. We must strive to put off the works of darkness, walk as children of the light, and keep the enemy from a door into our lives. With God, our consuming fire, we can do this as we draw nearer to Him.

Greg Crum is the pastor of Calvary Temple in Lovely.