What is the Fire of God?

When we know where God’s heart and thoughts are, we can access any move of the Spirit. But there is a pattern to the real flows of the Spirit that are found in Genesis. The Spirit moves (Genesis 1:2) over the face of the waters, and then God creates the perfect environment for His intentioned ‘crowning glory’ before creating humans. Genesis 1:26. What does this tell us?

There is always a flow of the Spirit that signifies that an environment is being created by God to bring about something spectacular. This manifestation of the Spirit signifies God’s intent to do something new. We saw it at creation and again when the disciples waited for the Spirit’s fullness on the day of Pentecost. The move of the Spirit is there to signify that something is being birthed. Therefore, by chasing after‘moves’ we lose sight of the reason for the move. 

Jesus breathed on His disciples to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). He then told them to wait until they were endued from on high (Luke 24:49). To be endued means to be invested, literally putting on the vestment of God. The Spirit was moving just as He had in Genesis to create an environment for what God was about to release. Waiting prayerfully prepares them for this. Acts 2:2-4 “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” 

They were cleansed with fire and then saturated with the Holy Spirit. Through this, God confirms and purifies the birthing of a new creation: the church. Everything Jesus had done to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth is now confirmed and sealed by God’s holy fire from His throne. The unified intent that worked when humanity had one language before Babel is purified through the tongues of fire and the speaking in tongues - not the same human language of Babel, but the language of the Spirit. A new, unifying language indicating the new, unified creation: the church. And that is why tongues of fire sat upon the believers in the upper room - it confirmed this new creation with signs.

There is so much more to His fire. When God answers our prayer and moves us into the midst of His fire, what will we find there? More importantly, what will find us? Psalm 97:2b-3a “Righteousness and justice are the foundations of His throne. A fire goesbefore Him…” So, if we want to get to the presence and power of God, we have to pass through the fire before God. Pure, unadulterated glory. ‘Father of lights’ in James 1:17 means ‘make manifest, fire’.

A study of the seraphim and Lucifer shows Lucifer walked among the fiery stones (before he fell into pride), the fire around God. Ezekiel 28:14, 16. This is God’s glory that emanates from His Spirit. We call it Shekinah Presence, glory, the cloud. There is a fire around God.

God is holy, and God is pure. He demands of us the same. “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:16. We can only do this by allowing ourselves to feel the fire and then passing through it. God’s fire serves the purpose of purifying to prepare us to come into His presence. To stand in the presence of a holy, pure God, you need to be holy and pure. It’s like taking a shower before you put on something new and special. God calls us to holiness for the very purpose of allowing us to step into His very presence in the throne room.

If we seek closeness to God, then we will always encounter this fire because that fire surrounds God. But we want to urge God to answer the prayer, “Send Your fire!” while we stay the same. Kingdom living is moving, growing, from glory to glory, from perfection to perfection. To grow purer, from gloryto glory, you must stand in the fire of God - and here’s the essential factor -you must undergo the fire with the intention of dealing with whatever is hindering you from flowing in the move of God. Like the silver in thecrucible, we seek to have the impurities burnt off, so we reflect the face of God and stand in worship in His heavy glory and holiness, unafraid.

We just have to remember that whatever happens in the fire, God’s eye is on usconstantly to pull us out of the fire as soon as we are ready. If you enter the throne room, you will have to face the fire. It’s there to purify you and make you ready for the new, deep level of closeness with God you’re about to experience. It’s in that closeness that you’re going to find what new thing God is creating in you. Fire purges, prepares and seals God’s intention into where God is taking you.

Hebrews 12:29 tells us “… our God is a consuming fire.” We want to understand the fire of God and how to use worship to take us into that fire so the Spirit can work in us and through us to cleanse, prepare and use us at a whole new level. Just as the disciples at Pentecost. 

If you approach the fire with this knowledge, you can gain its benefits. You can also fully enter into the power of worship. In John 4:23-24, Jesus is teaching on a life of worship. ‘Worship’ comes from the word that means ‘to kiss’. This form of worship is face-to-face in the most intimate form of love. Nothing is hidden. No wonder the word for ‘truth’ used in the above scripture is ‘not concealing’! To live in this level of face-to-face encounter, you have to have your fire cleaning.

There are always two choices in the midst of the fire of God, and because it’s so intense, we will often pull back before the Spirit is done. In the fire, you come to a place where you can show compliance - ‘I don’t want to do it, but I don’t want to go through this again’; or you can stay in that situation untouched and unchanged and go around the mountain again. Like the birthing of the church, some things need the fire to set them in motion in your life. Then it’s up to you to flow with the momentum created. Once that fire cleaning is done, you can move with liberty in and out of the throne room of God because all the things that were concealed in you have been brought to the fire, and you are transformed. 

Very strange things happen when you get into this fire. InHebrews 12, we find a great description of those things that the fire of God touches, and the chapter ends “for our God is a consuming fire.” God isn’t going to consume you, no matter how uncomfortable and scary it feels. He is consuming those things that get in the way of where you need to go. Psalm 66:10. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 3:17-18.

Stepping into the fire. “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.’” Isaiah 6:6-7. Redemption is the only way to have the marring effects of wrong thinking and wrongdoing removed, and then walking in the grace of God through repentance.

What Isaiah experienced here is the purifying, which is similar to what happens in the crucible of a silversmith: The little bowl of silver is placed right in the middle of the hottest part of the fire. Why hottest? So that it’s heated to the maximum. The fire heats the metal, making it liquid that flows. All the impurities bubble to the top, ready to be skimmed off and reveal pure silver. The silversmith watches it all the time, never taking his eyes off the silver or the crucible. This is to prevent leaving it in the fire too long because that will destroy it. How does the silversmith know when to remove the silver from the fire? When he can see his image in it.

This iswhat the prophet is experiencing here. That is the point of that whole scripture. Proverbs 17:3 “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.” So, the fire purifies us until all the impurities are skimmed off and Jesus can see His image reflected in our lives. We become holy through this fire so that we can receive deeper things from God because we are on a new level of closeness and ‘cleanness’. Then, when we enter into worship prayer, there’s nothing in the way of the flow of the Spirit and the impartation of new, deep things being birthed into our lives. The fire had prepared and purified us to look like Jesus and express Jesus in the unique way we were created to do.

Walking in the fire. You have the resident Spirit with you because you are a child of God in all your life and doings. Going through God’s fire takes you to a deeper level of worship. The purpose of worship prayeris to enter eternal heaven and stand in the very presence of God at His throne - His secret pavilion. Psalm 31:20.

Remember, the fire is a place where you are prepared and sealed into something new being created in you. This is beyond your new birth and your kingdom living. It’s a place where God shares things close to His heart. Also, standing in worship prayer, some of the holy fire surroundingHim transfers onto you. Just like Moses, whose face shone so brightly he had to wear a veil (Exodus 34:35), you take on some of that holy glory swirling around the throne and bring it to where you live, where it will change your life and others.

People will sense the glory you carry. Some will run towards the glory in you, and for others, it will be fearful. Paul encountered this. “Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul... This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified... Also, many of those who had practised magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totalled fifty thousand pieces of silver.” Acts 19:11-20.

After the fire, you will be changed and see things differently. Your deeper connection to God that happened in the fire gives easier access to hearing God and flowing in the power of heaven. It also allows you a new level of loving closeness with God. 

God's fire produces.  It takes you somewhere else. Isaiah 6:6-8 gives us a picture of what the Spirit’s fire will do in us: Spirit fire will purge things out of you and bring zeal. It purifies the weaknesses and takes us to a place where those areas become strong. It also creates something new in us beyond what we could imagine or bring about ourselves - like Isaiah and the disciples.  It’s a new level of living and awareness in the glory of God that produces the miraculous and fires our hearts. 

Spirit fire will impassion you. Paul said that he was compelled to preach the word, and Jeremiah declared that the word is like a fire in his bones. Jeremiah 20:9. When you have come through the fire, you’ll want to do something with it. It’s too much for you to contain within yourself. You want to transfer some of that new state you are in onto someone.

When the fire entered the upper room, it parted and touched each person. See Acts 2:3-4. One Spirit fire empowered many in different ways. Your experience in the fire and the result it produces will differ from anyone else's. It is a unique encounter between you and God, bringing you to a new level and creating something new that’s unique to you.

Spirit fire will ensure that what was planned for you can happen. Jeremiah 23:29 “Is not my word like a fire? Says the Lord; and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” God takes the prophetic word He gives you and breaks all the things that are not right to ensure that in the fire you come through right. But it’s up to you to respond. So, take the prophetic words you have been given and check where you may be resisting or opposing God in all areas of life so you can give free rein to empowered destiny. Give the Spirit’s fire free rein in your life so you are ready to worship in God’s presence. If you’d like to know more about theSpirit and His fire, we recommend ‘The Holy Spirit Book’. Click the button for your copy, and please use the free resources we have by subscribing to our monthly content.

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