Category: God’s Holy Heat

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You Thought Love Was Easy

Dear sister,

I have three vivacious children whom I love deeply.  One just turned seven and the twins just turned four.  Each have their own distinct personality that leave us both laughing and banging our head numerous times throughout the day.  We practice catechism questions during our breakfast time to inform our effervescent and willful kids of who our God is, why he made us and all things, and also to give me wisdom in how to teach them about how to do life from a biblical world view. Today we worked on our sin questions:

  • What does every sin deserve? The wrath and curse of God
  • How sinful are you by nature? I am corrupt in every part of my being
  • What is the sinful nature that we inherit from Adam called? Original sin
  • Can anyone go to heaven with this sinful nature? No. Our hearts must be changed before we can believe in Jesus and go to heaven
  • Who can change a sinner’s heart? The Holy Spirit alone

Whoa.  These questions often remind me of the weight and hopelessness of sin and informs my children of what their sins deserve.  A needed fact to help them ask themselves how they can be free of this wrath and curse.  My heart longs for this wrath and curse of God to be turned away from my kids and others who have not trusted in Christ.  This holy heat of wrath is real.  But how do we comprehend his wrath and its purpose?  It’s helpful to look at God’s love, righteousness, and jealousy to gain this understanding.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that God is love.  His love is the foundation of all his qualities…it is not his only quality…it holds up his others.  His love is good.  His love is righteous.  His love is jealous.  His love moves him to wrath.  But how?

Let’s look at his righteousness first.  John Frame defines God’s righteousness as how God “acts according to a perfect internal standard of right and wrong.  All his actions are within the limits of that standard.”  That God is good is the foundation of his righteousness.  We find his standard for law and justice in his law. Where is this law?  It’s the Word of God!  Not only does he give this law, he follows it as seen in Christ.  He does what is right and just.  This implies that righteousness is seen in actions. This is important because unrighteousness will also be seen in actions.  God always does what is right.  Humans do not.  And God cannot condone what is not right, sin as sin is lawlessness and lawlessness must bring some kind of penalty.  Hmmmm…a penalty has to be paid.

Next lets look at how God’s law is jealous.  He is jealous for his great name, he will not give his glory to another.  Moses describes his jealousy as a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24).  His jealousy is focused specifically on the sin of idolatry.  He has an exclusive love for his people and he demands reciprocal love from them, too.  If they give glory to another, watch out!  His jealous love will be seen fiercely, and rightly so.  His jealousy demands wrath.  He made a covenant with his people that demands exclusivity.  If his people are unfaithful to him, he is fiercely angry and jealous, just how a wife would be if she discovered her husband was unfaithful.  This is how God’s wrath comes on those who put idols before his name.  The penalty for loving something or someone more than God is his wrath.

This brings us to wrath. Jealousy and his standard of complete righteousness being broken are motives for wrath.  Wrath opposes our unrighteous sin in general and executes the punishments severely (Num. 11:33; 2 Kings 22:13, John 3:36, Rom 1:18, Eph. 5:6, Col 3:6, Heb. 3:11; 4:3, Rev 14:10, 19; 15:1, 7; 16:1, 19:15) Remember that our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29).  So God’s decisions of salvation and wrath are made from His good and righteous personal decisions that are grounded in his love. We cannot separate out his character to make him all of one character and nothing of another.  He is all of these all of the time.  I love how John Frame says, “There is something wild, mysterious, and threatening about God’s wrath, which makes it difficult to reconcile this with his love.”  We struggle with how a loving God can give holy heat.  It helps to remember that he is also patient and slow to anger (Ps 103:8, Joel 2:13).  He gives sinners many opportunities to repent.  His love actually postpones his wrath…like how I warn my children about their behavior before disciplining them.

We need to remember that Hell is real.  It’s the ultimate place where God’s wrath will be unleashed and fully experienced forever.  Those who do not repent and trust in Christ “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thess. 1:9).  This brings us back to his righteousness.  The loving part of righteousness will forgive all when a sinner repents, yet this righteousness also calls for a just punishment for those who do not repent.  This is made clear at the cross.  Where Christ sacrificed himself to pay the wrath of God sinners deserve thereby satisfying the just portion of righteousness.  He did this out of love for the Father which is the loving part of his righteousness.  This proves that if there is no wrath against sin, there can be no righteous love. John 3:16 explains this best, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.”  What this means is there is a way to escape the wrath of God in hell – through the cross of Christ!  There is hope for my kids and there is hope for you if you have not trusted him.

And for those of us who have placed their trust in Christ, it is true that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1), but that does not allow us to openly sin or rebel against God.  We no longer have to fear the wrath of hell, but He will discipline us when we do not live a righteous life out of our gratefulness and love for Christ.  We would do well to escape this judgement by looking daily to Christ.  We need to run our race with fellow believers who will encourage us on this lifelong journey (Heb. 10:25, Phil 3:14).

We teach our kids how their sins deserve the wrath and curse of God because we love them.  They need to know that hell is real…that his holy heat will come.  They need to not want that.  We want them to see their need for a Savior…THE Savior.  That Christ satisfied God’s justice by his suffering and death as a substitute for sinners of which they are.  He took God’s wrath and curse for them.  Then we beg them to trust Christ.  And then we tell ourselves the same thing, we deserved that wrath but Christ took it for us.  How can we not live out of a thankful heart full of love for this God who gave His only son to take our wrath out of His love for us?  Sweet sister, trust him afresh!

Yours In Christ,

Colleen

 

 

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God’s Holy Heat

Dear Sister,

We know the analogy. The refiner’s fire. Precious metals undergoing intense heat in order to remove impurities resulting in glimmering gold and silver readied for the artisan’s creative mind and hand—And God’s ramping up of trials in our lives in order to surface besetting, even egregious sins, in order to elicit repentance and bring forth the purity of Jesus in our souls and behavior.

Which one of us Christ-redeemed sisters has not felt the singeing, the distress, the anguish of our Father’s furnace? The pain is often excruciating—especially when the refiner must make the fire hotter. The initial temperature did not remove the dross.

Those of us who have birthed little ones know the agony of labor and delivery and the sweet reward of the child laid on our breast. God wants that for us in the fires of refinement. He desires that the pain in the trials and the outcome of holiness be sweet to our remembrance and taste.

Is it enjoyable in the fire? Obviously not. Do we love the travails of infertility, losing little ones, wayward children, betrayal, cancer, lupus, accidents, death, the agony of our babies born with special needs and medical equipment displacing all the pretties in the room? Those are the big ones. What about the daily scrapes and bruises, disappointments, unmet expectations, anxieties, frustrations, elusive peace? Do you often feel like the sons of Korah in Psalm 88, lamenting God’s seeming abandonment?

Do we truly believe all things are working for our good? Are we being conformed to the image of Christ in patience and purity and holiness? (Romans 8:28-29) God tells us that the peaceable fruit of righteousness is the yield for those who are trained in life’s painful trials. (Hebrews 12:11) Are we indeed being trained or are we chafing and rebelling under the yoke of the One who is gentle and humble in heart and promises rest for our souls? (Matthew 11:29) Do we trust that discipline proves we belong to the Master and we are not illegitimate? (Hebrews 12:8) Can we honestly say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised”, when our undesirable situation never changes? (Job 1:21)

Do we toe the line because we love our Savior’s face and groan at disappointing Him or simply because we are afraid of punishment? Or do we not care all that much and rely on distorted meanings of mercy and grace, not comprehending that these two can be severe in order to bring us to Himself in struggling or glad submission.

In the gifting, yes, gifting of trials in life, do we give thanks, obeying His admonition to be grateful in all things which is His will for us? (1 Thessalonians 5:18) Do we rejoice in difficulties because of the glorious fruit they produce in us? Do we find evidences of His holy attributes when our emotions are bent low with the weight of the present burden?  Can we say, “He is the Always Good” even when we do not understand?  Or do we grumble and complain, thrusting our fists at God, telling Him He does not know what He is doing?

Dearest Sister, let us ask ourselves these questions and ask the Lord of all to give grace to answer these queries according to biblical principles, with bare and honest hearts. Let us reckon His holy heat as good because He is good—always good. Embrace the emotions of pain and grief because they are real, but bring these under the authority of Christ. Bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Bear in mind:  All trials are ordained through His loving hands; all trials are His discipline/teaching in the school of becoming like Christ; our sufferings will not always resolve in relief on this earth; some trials are actual chastening for sin. It is not for me to figure that out in your life, dear Sister, only in mine. Whatever our conclusions about the why of a difficulty, one thing is certain: All is for our good and for His glory.

“Count it all joy, my sisters, when [not if] you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” James 1:2-4

I’m so grateful for His preserving love and His holy, refining heat in my own life, preparing me for the perfections of my heavenly home, causing me to love the Savior more deeply and yearn to see Him face-to-face when trials will cease and I will truly be like Him forevermore. Oh, yes, I still grumble. I still question. I resist thankfulness. Rejoicing is not my first go-to.   But these times are shorter in duration and always end in repentance. That’s an advantage of aging physically and in the Lord, by His grace alone.

“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 31:24)

“Though He slay me, I will hope in Him…” (Job 13:15a)

Enjoy this song by Shane and Shane and let the truths of its words sink deeply into your heart.  http://Though You Slay Me

With love,

Cherry

 

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A Heat Which Leads to Refreshment

Dear sister,

In the Christian faith the symbol for the Holy Spirit, which is imparted to the believer as a guarantee of their inheritance, is a flame. This is so because the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection was when God poured out His Spirit on the believers in Jerusalem (Acts 2). As the Scriptures tell us; “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit …”.

 Jesus had promised the disciples who followed him that when He returned to His Father in heaven that a helper (paraclete), would come. (John 17) This helper, who would lead them into God’s Truth, is the third person of the Trinity.  He would sanctify God’s people while on earth, so that when, in God’s appointed time, they were received into heaven they would be just like Jesus (2 Cor. 3:12). The sanctifying process by way of God’s Spirit is meant to make us holy in two ways. First, holy as in the sense of setting us apart from the rest of the world. Second, holy as in the sense of purifying us.

Basically, God’s plan in saving us is to change us, and God being God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, has decided that this process is the best means to that end.  Very much like the flame of a fire, our sanctification can involve a lot of heat.  I like to call it a Holy Heat.  As with most heat though, depending on the situation, it can make us extremely uncomfortable.  As I write to you, the country I live in is recovering from a deadly heat wave which swept across much of the central to northeastern United States. Temperature wise, things seemed upside down. The upper region of the country was hotter than the lower region. Of course, it is summer right? Some of this is to be expected at this time of year no matter where you live in the States. I live in Florida which is famously known for its unbearable heat. It’s furnace like intensity can literally wear you out, especially if there is not an air- conditioned space to retreat to. There is no mystery to Florida’s heat.  Those of us who live here know to brace ourselves come mid- April and to hang on until mid -November.

However, there is  mystery involved with Holy Heat. I call it that because it is often unexplainable and also many times we cannot see where the heat is coming from until we are completely in it. It is as though we have walked into a furnace that had no caution signs alerting us to it when we entered in.  Other times we enter into a furnace (situation) knowingly, yet we expect to feel no heat at all.  It seems strange doesn’t it, but we humans are really good at rationalizing. In fact, we have been perfecting it since the Garden of Eden. Nonetheless, God in His infinite wisdom knows everything.  He knows the motives of our hearts, He knows the facts surrounding the time and place we will walk into our personal furnace. He knows what will happen in the furnace and what we will be when we walk out of that furnace.  He knows all the same things for those who are in our lives and how it will affect them.  There are times in our sanctification where we might cry out to God in the midst of a personal furnace, “Why Lord? This heat is too much to bear! I can’t do this!”

The beautiful Truth which permeates all of this is that God is Holy, and His holiness and goodness are intricately intertwined (Romans 8:28-29). It may be difficult to see at the time, but God’s goodness is always, always, yes, always involved with our personal furnaces. His goodness and mercy direct the temperature so that it does not consume us, but it preserves us while melting away the dross (garbage) from our souls. Yet, God does not stop there! Holy Heat is meant to refine us and then revive us. Meaning, the end result is refreshment for our souls. Looking back at some of my personal furnaces I am able to see that it was the only way to refine my soul! And that my dear sister is like a refreshing splash of cool water on my red- hot face.

What does your personal furnace look like? When did you notice the temperature rising? Are you looking for God in the midst of the flames or are you just looking for a way out? What dross is God’s Holy Heat melting away? The temptation is to look away or run away from the source of heat. Sweet sister in Christ, don’t do it! Fix your eyes on Him who is the perfecter of your faith. Like the flaming tongues to the first converts of the Christian church were, look at the flame with its Holy Heat as a gift from above with a purpose. When you are delivered from your furnace pause, and be thankful to God who cares for you and directs His goodness and mercy to follow you all the days of your life (Psalm 23:6). Be refreshed by this truth!

Refined by His Holy Heat and Refreshed by His Good Pleasure,

Susan