Are You Fired Up For Jesus? Series

Are we a church on fire? Not really. We are an extremely warm church, but the warmth of friendship is not the same as the holy fire of God. I fear too many of us are content to set our spiritual thermostats so low we orchestrate the Holy Spirit out of our lives and we are more interested in being “cool Christians” rather than red-hot servants of Jesus.

Got doesn’t light churches, He ignites individuals. At Pentecost, each believer had his own little fire, and when they put them together they had a church on fire. Our church will be a church on fire when I get on fire for Jesus and you get on fire for Jesus and we bring our fire together. Like the old hymn says, “Lord as of old at Pentecost, You did your power display in cleansing, purifying flame descend on us today. Lord send the old time power–the Pentecostal power–that sinners be converted and your name glorified!” You can tell when someone is on fire for Jesus. How, because:

5. GOD’S FIRE RADIATES THROUGH HIS SERVANTS

Once God’s fire is lit in your heart, you can’t keep it a secret. When you place an iron bar in a blazing furnace, that bar begins to heat up. You can pull it out after a few minutes and it will be glowing. The same thing will happen to you when you are filled with the Fire of God. You will literally be glowing white-hot with your love for Jesus.

Angels are often described as having shining faces because they are exposed the glory of God. That’s where the idea of halos came from. When Moses saw the afterglow of God’s glory, his face shone like he had been out in the sun for days. When Stephen, the first Christian martyr, stood before the Sanhedrin and declared they had murdered the Son of God, they picked up stones and killed him. But before he died they said it looked like his face had been the face of an angel.

When you’ve got this fire, you can’t keep it inside! Jeremiah wrote: “His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)

John Wesley was kicked out of the Anglican Church because he was too radical. He preached in fields instead of churches. He was only 4 feet 11 inches tall, but he shook a continent for Christ. Once he was preaching in a crowd and a group of thugs had bragged they were going to interrupt his preaching and beat him up. John preached anyway. In the middle of his message these ruffians approached him with sticks and clubs. But this mighty man of God didn’t stop. Suddenly the leader of the thugs stopped and said, “Look! He glows! He glistens!” They dropped their clubs and sat down and listened and were gloriously saved.

Let me ask you again: HAS THE FIRE GONE OUT IN YOUR HEART? Are you known as a glowing witness for Christ? Are you more concerned with being cool than red-hot for Jesus? The fire can go out. That’s why Paul wrote to young Timothy: “I remind you to fan into flame [stir up] the gift of God, which is in you.” (II Timothy 1:6) In one house we built in Alabama we had a wood-burning stove. In the mornings I would get up and all you could see would be gray ashes, but I could take a poker and stir into those ashes and soon there would be a blaze. That’s what some of you need to do. You need to stir up those ashes of apathy. You’ve become cold and carnal and God wants to re-ignite your fire within! Don’t you want to have His fire? You need it for Power, you need it stay pure; you need His fire to be the kind of Christian that attracts others.