…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
God has been stirring up a fire in my soul to know Him more deeply. I want more than an ordinary experience, I yearn for rare intimacy with Him. I want to be filled to the measure with all of His fullness, walk in the power of His Spirit and have the image of Christ more fully formed in me. However, it requires death to self, and that’s not an easy path.
There has been a growing sentiment in Christianity that God exists for us and for our comfort. Some are cramming Him into a magic lamp to be roused by our wishes. There has been a gradual shift away from God-centered Truth to self-centered truth. We’re losing our moorings to the solid Rock and are drifting into individualized reality. It’s a much easier path, but not the one I will take.
I don’t need a therapy God who only empathizes with me and affirms me and makes me feel good about myself. I don’t need a Concierge who will pander me, prosper me and grant my every wish. I don’t need a God invented and reinvented in the fickle winds of culture.
I need the real God in my real world. One who calls me to a higher path, to be more than I am and all He has designed me to be. I need a God bigger than I am and bigger than my world.
I need the only One who can free me from myself and my bondage to sin. I need a God who calls me to repentance and obedience, then gives me the will and strength to obey and who will do in me the very thing He asks of me.
I don’t need a God who will keep me from the storm or from suffering but a God who controls it and walks with me through it to deeper places of His heart. I need a God who will purge and refine me until He is the very center and pulse of my soul.
I want to be undone and my heart set ablaze by the consuming fire of His fierce love and holiness. I need the one True God, the immutable Eternal God, who reigns in Sovereign power and is clothed with splendor and majesty.
So it is with those in the Society of the Burning Heart.