FIRES

Their hearts are like an oven as they approach their plotting.  Their anger smolders all night, in the morning it burns like a flaming fire.  Hosea 7:6

    Coals that are stoked all night by the keeper of the fire are kept alive. Embers are hot and ready for the job of baking the morning bread.  There would be no fire without someone having fiddled with coals.  The message is clear.  No person commits a grave sin without forethought.  Though people don’t yet see the fire of his deeds, there are coals he has been stoking.

    Every sin begins as a seed-thought.  For it to turn into a deed, there is a process of keeping the ‘thought of it’ on the back burner of our minds.  The idea is nurtured. It’s turned over and over in our heads, the place we think we can indulge safely, but the heat of the coals are preserved.  Fire will not be far away.

    This concept is the very one Paul talked about in I Corinthians regarding ‘burning lust.’  If we nurture lust in our thought life, it is a lighted fuse.

    How can we be protected from fire?  Take every thought captive.  Our minds are the battlefield.  Not far away, Satan has pitched his tent.  He strategizes, trying to discern what ideas he can pitch to us that will be attractive and seem so familiar to our makeup that we actually believe that they originated with us.  Once we embrace them, we will most likely allow them to take on a life of their own inside our head. Satan would love to be the keeper of the coals.  He never posted a resume but someone ignorant or passive has given him the job nonetheless.

    Ah, but there’s another fire which I much prefer.  Deep inside my spirit, the Spirit of God resides.  He stokes the fire of righteousness.  How much better for me to discern His thoughts, choose to think on the things He suggests, and ask Him to stir the embers.  The point for me is this ~ I must be proactive in my thought life. There is a fire and I must choose who it is that will be given the right to breathe spiritual oxygen over my coals.

Times are dangerous.  Temptation is everywhere.  I am vigilant and only your grace can give me the needed strength to be a successful warrior.  Amen