burn

Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it. 

There are a lot of things about society that make me chuckle, most of them being the social constructs that help us sleep easier at night or ease some of the burden that life can afford us at times.

We are afforded a great deal of security in our lives by a lot of flammable papers kept in flammable drawers or flammable computers in flammable buildings. In an instant, your life and all the zeroes you have accumulated in your bank account, savings account, or retirement fund could disappear as quickly as they were created.

I want to avoid the misnomer of being a bohemian hippie who is going to preach at you from a hemp-based platform as the smell of patchouli fills the air or something along those lines. I'm not here to say you have to fight the system and live outside of it. I am merely intrigued by the fact that so much of our security is in things that can disappear in flames and up in smoke in an instant.

Matthew 3:12 makes reference to burning the chaff, and Hebrews 12 ends about things being shaken from our lives, and God being a consuming fire. When I think of what the chaff in our life represents, I like to think of it as the sin we become dependent on. Sometimes that sin is fostered by unhealthy relationships, mindsets, or afflictions we have in our lives. As a prayer partner, I have found it very common for people to ask for God to remove or burn things from their life that preclude them from achieving their destiny or making them more able to serve His will. It is a scary thing to ask for, though. A lot of these things represent security in our lives, security that we cling to until our last dying breath. It is easy to be stubborn and stay where we are at: familiarity breeds stagnancy, but I think we need the fire in our lives to not only light up the dark areas, but burn and melt away the things that do not look like Him or do not give honor or point towards Him.

Honestly, though, I feel it is scarier not to feel the heat. If there is no adversity or challenge, then maybe this is evidence that growth is not occurring and we are becoming stagnant. The measure of heat is an indicator of how close we are to the flames, and that heat is conviction, the flames righteous cleansing. In my mind, it is one of those rare instances where fire seems cool like ice in my mind.

Still, sometimes I wonder if people really know what they are getting themselves into when they ask for things to be purged. A lot of us are like Linus from the comic Peanuts and want to grow up clinging to that security blanket with thumbs in our mouths. Eventually the fire comes (always invited, even if subconsciously) and we begin to realize the only true source of security in what the Word assures us of and what we inherit from Him.