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Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love,
 One holy passion filling all my frame;
The kindling of the heav’n-descended Dove,
 My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.

Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart
By: George Croly, 1780-1860

Listen as you read.  This is a very simple flute and harp version.

On Tuesday we considered the first two lines of this stanza, which contained a powerful and dynamic illustration of how to love God.  In these last two lines we will consider three more elements wrapped up into one final illustration of the Spirit’s work, consuming us with a passion to love God. Are you ready to catch fire?  Let’s think about this.

Kindling

Have you ever tried to start a fire with no kindling?  Those fire-starter bricks are really helpful but even with those some kindling gets the whole process going much more quickly.  So what exactly is kindling?

Small sticks and twigs that are easily combustible.  This is the role of the Holy Spirit when it comes to lighting a fire of love in our hearts for God.  There are moments when we draw near the flame of God’s love and can feel its radiant warmth.  When those moments pass however our lives cool far too quickly.  When need the kindling of the Holy Spirit to help keep that flame close to the logs of our lives.

It was like this at Pentecost when the Spirit came on the first disciples.  They were waiting as Jesus had instructed them.  They were ready.  God’s love was filling their hearts.  Then the heaven-descended Dove came upon them and provided the kindling they needed to get the fire going.

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 and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.  Acts 2:3-4 ESV 

In the imagery from the hymn the material that first kindles the blaze is the very presence of the Holy Spirit.  Are you ready to welcome Him to come and be that quickening fire-starter in you, as those first disciples did?  If you are, first ask Him to reveal anything in your life that would hinder His kindling work, confess that and then ask Him to come and kindle a love that flows from the throne of God into your heart.

Altar

My heart.  This is where the Holy Spirit kindles the flame.  This is where God’s love burns.  This is the place.  And that is a very important thing.  But it is only the place.

I would contend that the Holy Spirit kindling helps to bring the flame of God’s love to a critical temperature upon the altar of my heart.  All the conditions are right for combustion, but the flame and the kindling not only need a place to burn, my heart, they need some material, my life, at least for the purposes of the this illustration.

Certainly, nothing can extinguish the flame of God’s love.  Period.  But if that flame is going to burn in me, even in my heart, it needs some substance to burn.  That substance is my life.  I must offer my life, on the the altar of my heart, so the kindling of the Holy Spirit can cause the flame of God’s love to ignite it.  For that reason, I implore you to offer your life to God.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Romans 12:1 ESV

My life is combustible.  Think about it.  We burn with passions for all sorts of things.  Those passions consume us to the point that we sometimes have little left for other things or people that matter to us, including our loving and gracious God.  If we bring our lives too close to any of these other flames, they will catch fire and leave nothing in their wake but smoke and ashes.  

Maybe you are feeling the effects of having drawn too near to some other flame today.  That choice may have left you charred and smoldering.  You may even be wondering if there is anything left to offer God.

The good news is that there is.  God’s mercy is great and new every morning.  That does not mean we should just abuse it.  Rather we must receive it and then choose to respond to it by offering ourselves regularly to Him as an act of worship.  In this spiritual worship, the Holy Spirit comes as kindling to light our lives on fire on the altar of our hearts with flame of God’s love.

Flame

This would all be for naught, if it were not for the flame of God’s love.

I asked earlier if you had ever tried starting a fire without kindling.  Hard to do, but possible.  If you have no material to burn, you could scrounge around to find something to burn of less value than the resultant fire.  If you do not have a safe place to start the fire, you could start it somewhere else, but it is going to leave a mark at best.  But if you have no flame, all your other efforts are useless.

This is especially frustrating if you are cold, wet, hungry, or…all three!  A flame can warm the frigid, dry the soggy, and feed the famished.  This is important when it is your flesh that is being tended, but also when it is your soul.

The flame of God’s love warms the cold soul.  It dries the dampest and feeds the ravenous.  It can do so much more than that, if we will bring our lives as a sacrifice upon the altar of our hearts.

Will you bring your heart near the flame of God’s love?  Will you welcome the kindling of His Holy Spirit?  Invite the Spirit of God to come and do His work in you today.

Incendiary Thinking!

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Image Attributions
Holy Spirit Kindling – https://pixabay.com/photos/wood-kindling-lena-trunk-1073503/
My Heart An Altar – http://dee-lightfullmoments.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-fire-must-never-go-out.html
Thy Love the Flame – https://normansennema.com/archives/16397

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
 Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
 Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart
By: George Croly, 1780-1860

Listen as you read.  This is a lovely piano solo version.

On Tuesday we considered the first two lines of this stanza, which contained two different things we desire for the Holy Spirit to teach us.  In these last two lines we will consider three more lessons we seek to learn from our Teacher, each expressions of different soul struggles with their own unique challenges.  Let’s think about this.

Rising Doubt

Like storm clouds gathering on the horizon, so are the doubts that occasionally cloud our minds.  The difference is that the first can only be checked by God, and the latter can only be checked by us, with check here meaning to stop or slow the advance of something.

Doubts seem as real and as daunting as an actual storm front, but in comparison they are practically illusory.  Oh do not misunderstand me to say they are not significant threats to our journey of faith, but I would merely contend they do not have to be.  Consider what is required to slow the rise of doubt in your mind.  Trust.

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Hebrews 3:12 ESV

Doubt and unbelief are so similar they can be mistaken for one another.  One might say doubt could lead to unbelief if left unchecked.  Doubt is a lack of conviction, whereas unbelief is the absence of it altogether.  Belief requires trust. Trust checks doubt and rebellion at the door, for you can exercise faith to submit to one you trust.  It really is a decision.

Rebel Sigh

Left unchecked doubt can lead to rebellion, or a falling away from one in whom you formerly decided to place your trust.  It can rise slowly like doubt as well, creeping up on you while you are unaware until you find yourself not so much in a place of radical  rebellion, but despondent dissent.  Lost in an encroaching darkness.

In this way it is kind of like the darkness of night slowly settling on you.  You do not realize the departure of the light and the arrival of the dark until it is consuming you.  Then you find yourself all alone unmoored by any sense of direction, of right or left, or right from wrong.  This lack of ability to perceive direction leaves you complacent until all that is left is a sigh of resignation.  What started at as careless departure from all that is right and good ends up causing you to fall away from the living God.

It is especially in those moments when we need the last of our lessons to have taken root.

Unanswered Prayer

On first glance this last line seems like a prayer for the patience required to wait until God answers prayer.  That certainly may be a part of the request, but I think there is a very possible alternate or additional interpretation.  I think it may be a request for the same patience God exhibits between our prayer and His eventual answer.

I believe God hears and answers every prayer, just not how and certainly not when we would like.  Where might we might draw such belief?  From words like these.

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 1 John 5:14 ESV

This kind of confidence gives us the patience to wait for the answer when we may be inclined to doubt if our prayer was even heard.  It also gives us the ability to refrain from the audible expression of resistance, and even the feeling that prompts it.  Finally, it gives us the opportunity to carefully examine our motives in the event we are asking something outside of God’s will, which may be the very reason the prayer remains unanswered, God is giving us the time to understand and adjust to the reality that the answer will actually be “no.”  After all, “no” is an answer.

Take some time to pray the prayer below and if you are a Subscriber or Free Member walk through the podcast which will guide you through such a journey in just about 5 minutes, as each one does.

Adaptive Thinking!

Are these thoughts helping you to develop greater spiritual awareness?  Sign-up in the form to the right above to get updates of new tools to help you be Resonant.

Below is content available only to Subscribers and Free Members.  Want to learn more about accessing all the additional material in the Subscriber Content Library, click here.  Or check out some samples at our Free Member Content Library.  We have lots of tools and lots of options designed to help you be Resonant!  Check them out today!!

Subscribers AND Free Members enjoy this podcast! Everyone else, the transcript below.