How Your Fire Can Produce New Life


We had a milestone wedding anniversary lately, and I got 
congratulations cards. My wife got sympathy cards. But we had a 
wonderful couple of days in a romantic location - even doing some 
romantic things. Like a horse-drawn carriage ride through some 
beautiful countryside. Along the way, our driver pointed out a forest 
of tamarack trees - which the Indians reportedly called 
"twice-burning wood." Our driver explained that tamarack trees need a 
fire in order to
reproduce. Their bark is petroleum-based rather than glucose-based 
like most trees. It takes a fire to burn off the bark to expose the 
seeds that produce
new life.

Let's talk about "How Your Fire Can Produce New Life."

Instinctively, we think of fire as being destructive, and it sure can 
be. But in God's hands, fire can also be productive - as in producing 
new life. And
that fire you're going through or heading into can have the same 
effect for you. It's meant to be life-giving, not life-taking.

In fact, in Malachi 3:2-3, our word for today from the Word of God, 
the Bible says the Lord is "like a refiner's fire ... He will sit as 
a refiner and purifier
of silver; He will purify the Levites" - or, let's say "His servants" 
- He will purify His servants "and refine them like gold and silver. 
Then the Lord
will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness." The God who 
loves us turns up the heat to refine us, to make us more pure, to 
make us more valuable,
and to develop us into people that He can use mightily.

Of course, that's not what it feels like the fire is doing. It's just 
hot. It just hurts. But God is, in essence, burning off some of our 
bark to expose
the seeds of new life. God uses the fire to expose and eliminate sin 
that otherwise we wouldn't face. When it gets real hot, we finally 
ask the question
we probably should have asked long ago, "What's wrong, Lord? Is there 
something You want me to do differently?" The answer is probably "Yes."

It's usually been when God's turned up the heat on me that He's 
finally gotten my attention and forced me to face some things that I 
needed to change but
I didn't want to deal with. When I did, it began new life--a new 
season of spiritual refreshing and seeing Him take my life to a new level.

There's another way God uses your fire to bring new life. He uses it 
to qualify you to open other hearts to Jesus. People who haven't been 
willing to listen
to you when your life was going well will listen now because of the 
pain you're going through. God may use the fire you're going through 
to save them from
the fire of His judgment forever. Also, when God turns up the heat, 
He's often trying to get us to change our priorities. Everything in 
your life is on
one of two lists--"The Things That Really Matter" and "The Things 
That Really Don't." We tend to get those confused until the fire 
comes and makes us
focus again on what really matters.

Most important, your fire can produce a new life by causing you to 
see your God as you've never seen Him before. That's what happened to 
Job through all
of His suffering. After it all, he said, "My ears had heard of You, 
but now my eyes have seen You." (Job 42:5). You never really know the 
Lord until you
really need the Lord. And you really need Him when the fire's all 
around you. And in your desperation and bankruptcy, you experience 
His love and His power
as you never have before because you never needed Him this much before.

In Zechariah 13:9, God says, "I will bring them into the fire; I will 
refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on My 
name and I will
answer them; I will say, 'They are My people,' and they will say, 
'The Lord is our God.'" From the fire you're going through are coming 
the seeds of some wonderful new life.