There are many uses of “fire” in the Bible.
None are more personal.
Find out why by watching or reading our Truth in Two (full text below).
Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).
Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
Blaise Pascal was a famous French philosopher and mathematician of the 17th century. But today he is most famous for his writings entitled Pensées meaning “thoughts.” Pensées were Pascal’s theological writings collected after his death at the young age of 39. His conversion to Christianity was so abrupt, so transformational that Pascal devoted his final eight years to a focus on God’s work in the world. Blaise Pascal was so changed by his conversion that he wrote the word “fire” on a parchment and sewed it inside his coat, reminding him of the all-consuming fire of his internal transformation.
The word “fire” is a prominent biblical word. When God invited Moses and Israel’s elders to experience Him on Mount Sinai, Exodus 24:17 says “the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire.” “Offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire,” says the writer of Hebrews in chapter 12. Because God alone is God, Scripture often repeats the truth of Deuteronomy 4:24, “Your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Placing our worship on anything else is considered idolatry, the trigger for God’s jealousy.
And so, in the context of worshipping false ideas, God says in Jeremiah 23:29, “Is not my word like fire?” God’s Truth consumes falsehood. How does that experience of “fire” translate into our lives? One of the great lines of Jeremiah 20 verse 9 has always motivated me. The prophet declares that he must speak God’s Word because,
“There is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot”
I identify with Pascal’s “fire.” I feel it every day. It is the unquenchable fire of God’s Spirit who lives in me. The Word of God is a fire in my bones, and I cannot hold it in.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth, with light, from the fire of God’s Truth.