How is it that the “all-consuming” nature of God is our best
hope against our all-consuming fears?
One thing I love about the relationship-with-God aspect of
the truly Christ-centered faith is that we have daily testimonies of what God
does to show us that Jesus is with us always, to the very end of the age. Here
is today’s installment!
I am very familiar with people speaking of their
all-consuming fears. I have seen panic-attacks, dissociation, fear-based
self-protection, numbing depression, and all manner of expressions of people’s
broken souls.
I have always known that Jesus is the answer.[1] There
are so many promises related to the condition of our souls, that God’s grace is
always working to give us faith that God will do for us what he has said, and
what he has so often done for others.
This morning, as I was praying for people struggling with
the scary world of their inner soul-condition, I suddenly had the AHA!-Moment
that brought pieces of the puzzle together in ways I had never considered them
before. It revolved around a familiar expression from God's Book, which reads:
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.[2]
How do gratefulness, acceptable worship, and reverence and
awe, fit a relationship with the God who is a consuming fire?
Part of this is, no doubt, that the children of God know
that God’s impending judgment on the world will literally be a consuming fire.
We live in a foreign land that is destined for judgment. We know that. We know
our God is capable of judging everyone who has rejected his Son. No doubt about
that. We well-know how our own sins deserve that judgment, and so we are super
sensitive to the weight of condemnation about to come upon the world. Scary
stuff. God’s children are thankful to be his children, not his enemies.
However, the consuming fire of God’s nature has a very
personal application to the hearts of all God’s children. God has saved us so
that he can fully restore us to the image and likeness of his Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ. To do that, sin, guilt, shame, and fear, must be consumed. They took
root in our lives through our involvement in the world’s sin. Coming to Jesus sets
us free from all the condemnations associated with our guilt, shame, and fear. Now
we have a God who can consume whatever remnant of these things we struggle with
during this earthly lifetime.
The delightful ministry to my soul this morning was to see
that, no matter how all-consuming are sin, guilt, shame, and fear in my heart,
or in the lives of others, the all-consuming fire of God will purge from our
lives the dross of those things so completely that our Forever Home will only
know the righteousness, joy, and peace, of being in God’s presence for
eternity.
“Therefore” if we
are those people who are “receiving a
kingdom that cannot be shaken,” of course we would be grateful for this. Why
wouldn’t we “offer to God acceptable
worship, with reverence and awe,” knowing that “our God is a consuming fire” who consumes in his children all that
makes us different from Jesus, and that he will consume all evil and evil doers
at the return of Christ so that there is no further remnant of sin, guilt,
shame, or fear, in the presence of his perfect love?
© 2016 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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