In Case Of A Fire
You've been here before, lost in a red, dancing shadow that's warm on your face like a million pecks at once. Pecks, if the kiss gets any deeper than that, you know you'll get
Burnt by fire. We all have fires in our lives, not the kind of fire you build, the kind that breaks out all at once, a fire that consumes you, threatening to steal all your peace, kill all your oxygen, destroy all that you own. And it always starts out small, a white lie; a compromise that isn't hurting anyone, an "it's really not that bad" that terraforms into a life-threathening cancer. Fire!! It's a pretty word, and somewhere in our souls, sometime in our actions we are lighting it up, chalantly, non chalantly, doesn't matter, with all the flammable material that is in you it's only a matter of time before you have to deal with it, because sweep a flame under the rug all you want, one day, that rug itself will catch fire.
So what do you do incase of a fire? Step one is, if you can find the source, attack the source.
Throwing water at flames gets you nowhere, it's like cutting the stem of weeds, that will only cut it short for a time, and then it'll grow right back. If you want to kill weeds, you must attack the root. Jesus speaking of the pharisees waywardness said "Listen, and take this to heart. It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up." He went further to explain what He meant saying "Don't you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated? But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It's from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. That's what pollutes." In essence, we always want to blame something that happened in our past, some external stimulus that sparked off the fire, but it's not what happens TO you that matters (because life being life, you don't have much control over that) it's what happens IN you that does (that, you have control of). All the things you experienced in your childhood, you could've swallowed and purged away. The temptations, the ditches in your environment, the negative influences, all your excuses are nothing but hard meat you had to swallow. You could've chewed, you could've gotten it out of your system, but you held onto it, and even biology says that will definitely pollute you. The fire, your so called demons, the devil you think is pestering you, is actually you. Don't get me wrong, demons do exist, but they don't outnumber us, or match us, there aren't 7.5 billion demons for the 7.5 billion humans on the earth and the devil is NOT omniscient or omnipresent. He isn't killing babies in Malaysia while monitoring and enabling your addiction to porn in Nigeria, please don't give him so much credit. Pre-Christ we were under the colonial rule of the flesh, post-Christ the most the devil can afford is neo-colonialism, that is to say we have independence, but due to how our mind works, he still APPEARS to have residual power over us, it's your slave mentality doing you in, not the devil.
Stay Prepared
A moment of crisis can happen to any believer, at any point in their lives. It doesn't matter how young, how old, how spiritually strong or weak. It matters how prepared you are. Pastors and floor members alike have fallen due to not being ready. In fact, why it may appear that some people never go through any crisis at all, is because they're so prepared for the fire, that before it can do any damage, they've already put it out. And here I'll tell you the number one and ultimate fire control strategy. Knowing God loves you, no matter what. Unbelief. At the end of the day that's all the fire is trying to achieve, the devil doesn't want you broke, or dead, or HIV positive, he wants you in hell, and the only way to do that is to have you dealing with so much fire, you think your already there, more so, that you're the devil himself, undeserving of love, unredeemable. But it's a lie, and like a bad dream, no matter how long the tough times last, they will end. Pata pata you will die and go to heaven. Just never stop believing God loves and wants you.
Now for some Rick Grimes toughness, if you fall to the fire, you were never strong in the first place. If you think that because there's no trouble in your life, and you're just sprinting through the lush forest without a care in the world that you're strong, think again. When you've dealt with the Big Bad wolf, then we'll know If you're Robin or Red Riding Hood.
You must be prepared on the evil day to lift up the shield of faith to quench the fiery darts of the enemy, with the breastplate of righteousness that tells you your heart despite your actions is in the right place. The helmet of salvation so that all of those thoughts of you deserving damnation will not crack through your skull. The belt of truth (that you are the righteousness of God) to hold your pants up and give you some dignity. The sword of the spirit to go Samurai Jack on Aku (cough, I mean the devil) and the shoes of peace. That's what you walk in. Don't be like this fire extinguisher that I saw at a fuel station, rocking in the wind because it was empty.
Like Scar and the Hyenas in Lion King: Be prepareeeed!
Burnt by fire. We all have fires in our lives, not the kind of fire you build, the kind that breaks out all at once, a fire that consumes you, threatening to steal all your peace, kill all your oxygen, destroy all that you own. And it always starts out small, a white lie; a compromise that isn't hurting anyone, an "it's really not that bad" that terraforms into a life-threathening cancer. Fire!! It's a pretty word, and somewhere in our souls, sometime in our actions we are lighting it up, chalantly, non chalantly, doesn't matter, with all the flammable material that is in you it's only a matter of time before you have to deal with it, because sweep a flame under the rug all you want, one day, that rug itself will catch fire.
So what do you do incase of a fire? Step one is, if you can find the source, attack the source.
Throwing water at flames gets you nowhere, it's like cutting the stem of weeds, that will only cut it short for a time, and then it'll grow right back. If you want to kill weeds, you must attack the root. Jesus speaking of the pharisees waywardness said "Listen, and take this to heart. It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up." He went further to explain what He meant saying "Don't you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated? But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It's from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. That's what pollutes." In essence, we always want to blame something that happened in our past, some external stimulus that sparked off the fire, but it's not what happens TO you that matters (because life being life, you don't have much control over that) it's what happens IN you that does (that, you have control of). All the things you experienced in your childhood, you could've swallowed and purged away. The temptations, the ditches in your environment, the negative influences, all your excuses are nothing but hard meat you had to swallow. You could've chewed, you could've gotten it out of your system, but you held onto it, and even biology says that will definitely pollute you. The fire, your so called demons, the devil you think is pestering you, is actually you. Don't get me wrong, demons do exist, but they don't outnumber us, or match us, there aren't 7.5 billion demons for the 7.5 billion humans on the earth and the devil is NOT omniscient or omnipresent. He isn't killing babies in Malaysia while monitoring and enabling your addiction to porn in Nigeria, please don't give him so much credit. Pre-Christ we were under the colonial rule of the flesh, post-Christ the most the devil can afford is neo-colonialism, that is to say we have independence, but due to how our mind works, he still APPEARS to have residual power over us, it's your slave mentality doing you in, not the devil.
Stay Prepared
A moment of crisis can happen to any believer, at any point in their lives. It doesn't matter how young, how old, how spiritually strong or weak. It matters how prepared you are. Pastors and floor members alike have fallen due to not being ready. In fact, why it may appear that some people never go through any crisis at all, is because they're so prepared for the fire, that before it can do any damage, they've already put it out. And here I'll tell you the number one and ultimate fire control strategy. Knowing God loves you, no matter what. Unbelief. At the end of the day that's all the fire is trying to achieve, the devil doesn't want you broke, or dead, or HIV positive, he wants you in hell, and the only way to do that is to have you dealing with so much fire, you think your already there, more so, that you're the devil himself, undeserving of love, unredeemable. But it's a lie, and like a bad dream, no matter how long the tough times last, they will end. Pata pata you will die and go to heaven. Just never stop believing God loves and wants you.
Now for some Rick Grimes toughness, if you fall to the fire, you were never strong in the first place. If you think that because there's no trouble in your life, and you're just sprinting through the lush forest without a care in the world that you're strong, think again. When you've dealt with the Big Bad wolf, then we'll know If you're Robin or Red Riding Hood.
You must be prepared on the evil day to lift up the shield of faith to quench the fiery darts of the enemy, with the breastplate of righteousness that tells you your heart despite your actions is in the right place. The helmet of salvation so that all of those thoughts of you deserving damnation will not crack through your skull. The belt of truth (that you are the righteousness of God) to hold your pants up and give you some dignity. The sword of the spirit to go Samurai Jack on Aku (cough, I mean the devil) and the shoes of peace. That's what you walk in. Don't be like this fire extinguisher that I saw at a fuel station, rocking in the wind because it was empty.
Like Scar and the Hyenas in Lion King: Be prepareeeed!
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