Make Me Ignitable.

I have not written in over a month because in many ways I have been in a pit. Sick, exhausted, vulnerable, doubting, hiding, feeling fraudish, pulled in many directions and utterly agreeing with the enemies arrows that have sought, yet again, to keep me down and quiet.

But there has been a lifting.  Victory is becoming to a redeemed child of God.  

And the message that has been burning within me while I have felt so suppressed is one that I believe is to be delivered to many of God’s people today: revival.  This literally means “to live again”.  It is a period of unusual blessing and activity among His own, completely dependent upon the Spirit.

In the struggle not against flesh and blood, I have grappled to articulate that I want to know God not just in His omnipresence but in His manifest presence. You and I are made for this. The Kingdom, through each one of us, IS to come to earth.  And we settle for so much less. Day after day. We say it is because we are busy being mothers, wives and career women. 

How we cheat ourselves and our families.  How we are lulled to sleep. And how we will never make an impact on this world my sisters, going broader if we refuse to go deeper.

Wake up! 

Let’s live in the reality that God is to be tangibly perceived, transformational and personal.  This manifest fiery (I Kings 18:24) presence is available to God’s people.  Persistent prayer and  radical obedience is required.  And when His presence comes, it will put you in your place as well as the enemy, even as it  puts God in His.

“Father, send us the Holy Spirit.  Send us the wind of spiritual life and the fire of unconquerable zeal.  You are our God.  Answer us, of God, by fire.  Send us the wind and the fire and then we shall see You to be God indeed.  The kingdom comes not and the work is flagging.  Oh that You would send the wind and the fire and You will do this when we are all of one accord, all believing, all expecting, all prepared by prayer.

– Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1842

“Am I ignitable?  God deliver from the dread asbestos of ‘other things’. Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be a flame.  But flame is transient, often short-lived.  Canst thou bear this, my soul-short life? Make me thou fuel, flame of God.”

 -Jim Elliot

“The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same.  There can be one without the other.  God is here when we are wholly unaware of it.  He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence.  Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us.  If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and life radiant with the light of His face.”    

– A.W. Tozer