The Fire (Part 3)

The Fire (Part 3)

(5) Is ignited by prayer. 

The story of Elijah on Carmel Mountain in 1 Kings 18 emphasizes how prayer can start a fire.  When Elijah prayed, the fire of God fell.  If we ever want to experience the Pentecostal fire, we must learn to pray.  In the Upper Room, believers prayed for days and then Peter preached a ten minute message and 3,000 were saved.  We pray ten minutes and preach for hours and wonder why the fire of God does not fall and our altars are barren. Prayer is the key to igniting the fire. 

(6) The Word is like fire.

God's Word is compared to fire in Jeremiah 23:29:

"Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord..."

Jeremiah 20:9 "Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name, But His Word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay."

Jeremiah 5:14 "Wherefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, because ye speak this word, behold, I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them."

Revelation 3:18 "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich..."

Psalm 12:6 "The Words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried in the furnace of earth, purified seven times."

When the fire of God has touched your soul, His Word will be like fire shut up in your bones.  It will literally burn within you night and day.  In Jeremiah 36 the King tried to destroy the Word of God, but found he could not stop the word of fire!

(7) The atonement is affected by the fire. 

The fire of God requires a holy vessel in which to burn.  Every vessel used for fire in the tabernacle and temple was holy.  You can only be holy as the cleansing fire of the atonement of Jesus Christ burns in your life. The relation of the fire to the atonement of Jesus was illustrated when Aaron stood between the living and the dead in Numbers 16:46:

"And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censor and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them:  For there is wrath gone out from the Lord;  the plague is begun."