Passion's Fire

Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, Pastor G said something very interesting:  You cannot possibly put on the garment of praise until you have gone through the sacrificial fire.  (I’m paraphrasing in my own words, of course.)  As he was talking all I could see was a gauntlet of people standing along the Via Dolorosa as Christ stumbled by struggling to carry the cross the Roman soldiers would hang him upon when they reached Golgotha. I could see them cursing and spitting upon him.  I heard them shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”  What was really frightening was that a lot of the people I saw looked an awful lot like me.

Could it be?  Was I really there when he was crucified?  Perhaps not historically but every time I disobey him, every time I do what I know not to do, do I not cause the hammer to come down on those nails in his hands yet again? Am I not just as guilty as those who nailed him to that cross so long ago?  I think so. I look at what he suffered on my behalf and I’m pretty sure Pastor G is right- there is no garment of praise without a garment of ashes.

It is in the fire that God purifies us and in the ashes that he sanctifies us for his service.  Hebrews 10:39 says, “But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.”  Many there be that the fire will destroy and the ashes will turn backward to despair, but we are not they.  We are those who have been through the fire and have been cleansed by the ashes.

We are the tabernacle for the Spirit of God, says Pastor G, and we should not be touching dead things.  What are the dead things?  For me, all those things in the past that used to haunt me.  After the fire of cancer and meeting God in the fire, I choose not to go back.  I choose to go forward, wherever that may take me.  I choose the power to stand for Christ and his Kingdom.

Death is everywhere.  It touches all of us some time or another.  Last week two more people related to someone at work were taken by cancer.  Again I have to wonder, why do I remain?  Again I have to ask, Lord, what would you have me do?  But God’s timing is not mine and he has said, “Be patient.”  Not one of my strong suits.  I want to rush out and do whatever it is but God says wait.  So I must wait.  God’s timing is always perfect.  He knows mine is not.

Today Pastor G said that the miracle of the red heifer is not in the sacrifice but in the ashes that were left.  The miracle is in what’s left after the fire stops burning.  Whatever the fire took from you was something you did not need.  God, he said, performs the miracle not through what you lose but through what you have left when the fire stops burning.  Even if what’s left is nothing, God can work. 

Move forward and don’t look back, I heard.  Looking back means I have to touch dead things – all those mistakes and bad decisions I made – things in my past that no longer matter.  God says we are forbidden to touch dead things.  Sins I go back to, Pastor G says, are some of those dead things.  Going back cancels out my future.  Don’t let your history destroy your destiny, the Spirit said through Pastor G – leave those things alone. 

Handling dead things will steal your peace and joy. I know that to be oh, so, true.  I’ve met so many people who still live in the mire of things they didn’t get, things they didn’t become, and things they believe they will never be.  They are always negative, always complaining, and I don’t think they’ve ever had a good day in their miserable lives. They are so preoccupied with dead things they’ve become defiled themselves.   And I truly believe they’d love me to stay there with them.

I refuse to stay there.  I will not live in a graveyard of “has-beens,” “poor me” and “oh, how I’ve suffered” – not when I know that Christ has washed me in the ashes of his blood and freed me from their prison. I need the cleansing power of the washing of ashes.  Only God can provide that kind of purification.  I cannot do it alone. 

I seek God’s purification and sanctification by the ashes of the sacrifice – the red heifer, Jesus Christ, my Lord.  And I need to apply the ashes daily so that I can be transformed into the servant God would have me be. It may not be comfortable being in the ashes but when I move out of them I will be washed clean.