Prepare For The FIRE!

Where the brethren gather together to enthrone the King!

Our Mission: to gather people into the manifest presence of God that they might be transformed.

By Rev. Jacquie Kirkwood

Everywhere you turn, you hear the sound of the trumpet of God. His prophets are heralding the good news. It is a new season in the Kingdom of God! God’s desire, we hear them say, is that above all things we prosper and be in health, even as our soul prospers. (3rd Jn. 2) He has ordained us for victory over our struggles and to have influence in our world. Ask of Me, they tell us, and I will give you the nations! (Ps. 2:8) It is the season of favor! It is the season of restoration! It is the season of the harvest of the seed you have sown! Prepare, they exhort us! Prepare for the fire of the glory of God! And ….. I BELIEVE IT ALL…….

But, there is one thing that I struggled with for years. I cannot count the number of prophetic words I have heard over the last 23 years where the Spirit of the Lord firmly exhorted His people to prepare….PREPARE! “Get ready! A new wave of My Spirit is coming and you must prepare! Get ready”, He would say...over and over again…..”Get ready!” Now, I have always believed that when God speaks to His church by His Spirit, that the church should rise up and do what He says!! And when I would hear of all of the great things that He has planned for His people and He would say to prepare…..I would think to myself, “What DOES that mean????” What kind of preparation is He talking about, that we need to do to get ready for His glory to be manifested in our midst? What does He want us to do? And as the years have gone by and I have had the privilege of seeing Him manifest His glorious presence, I have learned some things about His glory. It is well illustrated in the Gospel of Luke, in the third chapter. And in other places in scripture too, some of which we will look at here today. But first, Luke, chapter three. The scripture is telling us of the appearance of John the Baptist on the scene in Israel. In verse two the scripture says that the “word of God” came to John while he was in the wilderness. Most of us despise the wilderness experiences of our lives and miss the great opportunities they provide for us to experience the joy of our God causing the wilderness to bloom for us in the flowering of a revelation from Him….the word of the Lord coming to US in the midst of OUR wilderness. The Bible says that John was sent unto Israel, even as had been prophesied of him by Isaiah the prophet, as one who would come out of the wilderness place crying, “Make ready or “prepare” the way of the Lord!” Isaiah said that every crooked place would be made straight. In other words, every perverse and wrong thing would be made right. And that in that day, “All of mankind would see the salvation of God”. The word salvation comes from the Greek word soterion (so-tay'-ree-on), which, in turn, comes from the Greek word soteria (so-tay-ree'-ah), which means deliverance, preservation, safety and salvation. In Isaiah 40:5, where the verse in Luke is quoted from, it says, “Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.” So, allow me to try to put this all together in wording we might use today.

God did a work of grace in the heart of John the Baptist while he was in the wilderness. In that seemingly barren place, the revelation of the word of the Lord came to John and told him to rise up and come out of the wilderness and to prepare Israel for the revealing of the glory of God. And that His glory’s manifestation would bring deliverance, preservation, safety and salvation to the people in such a way that everyone would see it! Wow! Sounds pretty similar to today, doesn’t it? God was saying, “I’m going to pour out of My Spirit and My glory upon you. It is going to bring you deliverance from sin, sickness and poverty. It is going to preserve you for all eternity unto Myself. It is going to surround you with favor and safety and everyone you know is going to see the reality of My working in your life!!” And it also had that nagging component of what John came out of the wilderness to do, and that was to help the people to PREPARE! To get ready! To make the way of this outpouring of God’s Spirit unencumbered. What DOES that mean? How do we prepare for a move of God? The answer to that, my brethren, lies in the message which John came preaching.

Chapter three, verse three says, “And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance …” He further exhorted them to, "... bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ' We have Abraham for our father,' for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Repentance…..a life of repentance, a heart easily broken and easily turned to repentance. This prepares us for a move of the glory of God! We should not be trusting in the doctrine of our denomination to make us right with God. We should not be looking to whether or not we are associated with the current “it” group in the body of Christ to make us right with God. We should not be looking at worldly ways of measuring success to determine if we are right with God. As with all things pertaining to our relationship with Him, it is about the condition of our heart. It is about the content of our thought life and our words. It is about our attitudes and our treatment of others. It is about the fruit of the Spirit manifest in our lives. It is about how quickly we respond to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit when He tugs on our heart during the course of our day. It is about how real our Christianity is in our day to day life. Amen. First Chronicles Sixteen Twenty-seven says that, “Glory and honor are in the presence of the Lord.” And, Hebrews says that, “Our God is a consuming fire.” The fire of His glory is in His presence and when it is poured out, repentance is how we “Prepare for the FIRE!”

The writer of Hebrews, in Chapter twelve, is contrasting the two covenants of God. The one which came forth from Mount Sinai and the one from which we are born, which came forth from Mount Zion. In verses twenty-five through twenty-nine he says,

12:25 See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven.

12:26 And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven."

12:27 This expression, "Yet once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

12:28 Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe ;

12:29 for our God is a consuming fire.

God sent John the Baptist to warn the people to prepare for the Glory of God. To embrace “the art of repentance”. There is an art to it because it is a matter of the heart. There are principles involved in repentance, yes, but if it is only a ritual and does not touch the heart, it is worthless. Do not refuse Him who is speaking, we are warned. Do not think because we are of the New Covenant and under grace, that we shall escape the judgment, which is stirred by the fire. We must judge ourselves, that we would not be judged along with the world (1st Cor. 11:31-32). For He has promised that just as the fire of His glory shook the earth in the Old Covenant, we too shall experience a shaking, as the fire of His presence is poured out and is manifested. He tells us in the verses above that there is a purpose to this shaking. It is so that anything and everything in our lives that can be shaken can be removed out of our lives, so that only that which cannot be shaken can remain. So, when the rains of His Spirit come, we must be like the wise man who built his house upon the rock and as the rains beat upon the house, and the floods came, the house stood firm. The rock is the word of God. The rains are the glory which brings a shaking. We will be challenged when the fire of God shows up in our lives. Our lives must be firmly built and established on the word, so that when the shaking comes, and any place is revealed to us where we are not established on the word of God, we can quickly repent and align ourselves with His holy word.

Every good and perfect gift comes from God, the Bible says. Mark sixteen verse twenty tells us that the Holy Spirit works with and confirms the word of God with signs following. “We want a move of God’s Spirit,” we cry out! “Revival … we want revival!” We want to see souls saved and people miraculously healed! We want to see signs and wonders! We pray the promises of the word of God, in faith believing, and when His Spirit comes to confirm the word with signs following, we see and experience the FIRE! There is exhilaration in the midst of the people! We shout and rejoice and cheer! But, if we have not properly prepared….if we are not also devoted to the art of repentance, we are then shocked when the shaking hits. Every place in our lives that are crooked and perverse….every place in our heart that needs to be made straight and every encumbrance that needs to be removed is exposed by the glory of God. If we will not judge ourselves, then the circumstances of life will come to bear upon us, that the true condition of our own heart will be revealed. This too, is the mercy of God, that we would have opportunity to repent. And if we will not…..the fire unravels us and our lives. Then, in our bitterness, we look for someone to blame. How did we get from the mountain top of His glory to this?

I am so grieved to have to report that over and over again, I have seen this sequence of events. We love the euphoria of a move of the Spirit of God, but in our arrogance and religious rebellion, we are unwilling to look at ourselves. Instead we look at God’s messengers and take up stones against the prophets. And, then not only do we see our own lives unravel, but the move of God’s Spirit dwindles to nothing, as well. Aborted by the immaturity of the saints. And over and over again, the Lord arises to our cries for revival and graciously pours out upon us again and again, each time giving us the opportunity to be prepared for the fire which comes. And, the trumpet is once again sounding. In the spirit realm you can hear it. There is an arising of a wave of His holy fire. It is coming. Revival and salvation. Will you make ready? Will you bow your heart in repentance? Will you prepare for the FIRE?

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