We have just completed our third annual Prayer Summit here in Columbus - 40 hours of continuous intercessory prayer for the lost and our Teen Challenge programs, staff and students around the world. I hope you were able to join us via livestream. This year's theme was "Hearts Captured by God's Fiery Love". I had the privilege of opening the event by looking at the topic of God's Fiery Love.
The word "fire" gives us powerful images:
· Danger when you hear it shouted in a crowded building
· Comfort when camping on a cool, frosty night
· Strong emotions during the heat of the moment of a fiery temper
· Fire also refines, hardens metals and gets rid of impurities
· Fire illuminates and consumes darkness.
In all these things one thing is constant -- fire is associated with change. God's fiery love engulfs, embraces, overwhelms, is undeserved, and will change you. His love is experiential - most often experienced when you are in prayer. It's when you choose to get so close to God that you can hear him whisper.
Like an encounter with fire, an encounter with God is life changing.
There are many churches and organizations that know the language of Christianity, but many don't know the Savior who embodies all that it means to be a follower of Christ.
There are those who attend church, are a part of small group meetings, but their entire life testifies to compromise. They sleep with members in their "prayer" group, drink alcohol in excess, they do what it takes to get ahead at work and the values that are laid out in the word of God are never considered in their daily life. That is cultural Christianity - that is living your life like you want to without the fire of God's presence changing you. God's fiery love will change you.
God's fiery love will change you; only if it has captured your heart. When the heart is captured by God's fiery love, nothing gets in the way of the revelation of His love for us. There are those who truly understand His fiery love. They have drawn so close to Jesus they have experienced him at a level for which others can only hope.
In God's Word we have a perfect example to consider -- the Seraphim! The angels who are part of the seraphim praise God's perfect mix of truth and love and reflect the divine energies of justice and compassion from the Creator to the creation.
The word "seraphim" is derived from the Hebrew word saraph, which means "to burn." Seraphim angels burn with passion for God that ignites the fiery love that emanates from them. The Bible describes love as "a blazing fire, like a mighty flame" (Song of Solomon 8:6-7).
Love is- " as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave, many waters cannot quench love."
Jerry Nance
that they use iteenchallenge.org at every level of their first phase and second phase staff training.
