RIVERS, by Joel Kibble

Fire!

I have a close friend who shared with me about a catastrophe that he’s experienced recently.  He had a mechanic come over to his house to change a fuel pump in his truck.  In order to accomplish this, the mechanic needed to remove the fuel tank to get to the pump and replace it, then replace the fuel tank.  My friend asked the mechanic if he needed to pull the truck out of his garage to do this, and the mechanic replied that it wasn’t necessary.  He would be able to do all that he needed to do from inside my friend’s garage.
The mechanic had removed the tank, replaced the pump and was reinstalling the fuel tank and almost had it on when suddenly everything caught fire.  In seconds, the garage was engulfed in flames as the situation rapidly descended into chaos.  The mechanic and his assistant whose clothes also caught fire escaped with their lives and miraculously weren’t burned.  The truck was totally destroyed, as was the garage.  The fire hadn’t reached the rest of the house, but the house was lost to smoke damage, and when the fire department arrived, by protocol, all the windows in the house needed to be smashed out to keep the fire from consuming the structure of the house.  The rest of the house also sustained water damage, which rendered it completely unlivable.  In a matter of seconds, everything my friend owned was damaged.  
Blessings? Absolutely.  I won’t go into the fact that he, his wife, his mother-in-law, and his children were all away from home on this particular day, and that most of the rooms they usually occupy were closest to the garage.  That’s another testimony.  What intrigued me was what the fire marshal stated as the most likely possibility for the start of the fire.  While the mechanic otherwise appeared to have known what he was doing, it was determined that the garage wasn’t a sufficiently ventilated area, even with garage doors wide open.  The mechanic and his assistant had been working and had become familiar and unmindful of the trapped gasoline fumes that had surrounded them.  From a most unlikely source, a spark had ignited the trapped fumes.  Positioned in the garage was a refrigerator whose motor had automatically turned on, producing a spark sufficient to ignite the fumes, setting the truck and the garage on fire.
For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking of this fact, even though my friend went on to testify to the goodness of God in restoring what the fire had taken. The unfortunate events ironically strengthened his relationship to his wife and gave him a greater sense of the blessedness of life and its value.
Meditating over this event during the next couple of days, it became clear to me.  “Joey, you have been praying for more and more of the Holy Ghost’s fire and It’s presence in your life, but like the mechanic, there have been some potentially dangerous, surrounding conditions that you haven’t been mindful of or seriously considered.”  

Though he was able to do the job and had undoubtedly done it many times before, the mechanic had become familiar in his skills and had neglected basic fundamental rules.  He shouldn’t have been working in an unfamiliar environment with major potentially hazardous appliances. He should have chosen a well-ventilated environment, such as a properly equipped, professional auto-mechanic garage.  He had good intentions, but they were not sufficient to substitute for obedience to general rules of safety.

In the book of 2 Samuel 6, there was a story in the Bible about God’s people becoming equally careless of their environment.  David wanted to bring the ark of God back into the camp of Israel after they had become lackadaisical with the symbol of God’s abiding presence.  Their enemies, the Philistines, had snatched the ark from the Israelites, which had become nothing more than a glorified charm to them.  While the ark itself did nothing as far as victory for the Israelites, it desecrated the Philistine’s land and itself became a catastrophe wherever it was placed while in their possession.  In desperation, the Philistines put the symbol of God’s presence on a cart led by cattle and turned it loose, figuring that if the cattle miraculously pulled it out of their land and took it, unguided, back to the land of Israel, it must be the result of divine providence.  
King David had good intentions of putting the ark back where it belonged, but He and his priestly leaders had become familiar with disregarding what God had asked.  According to the book, Patriarchs and Prophets, when Uzzah the high priest stretched out his hand to steady the ark that was being carried on a cart back to Israel and was killed for touching it, there were three reasons.  One, Israel had become used to sin and disregarded God in a number of areas, which was how the ark got stolen in the first place.   Israel didn’t follow His express commands and had fallen out of vital communion with Him, yet decided to bring the symbol of His present out to wave it around in front of their enemies as if it had intrinsic power apart from God Himself.  

Two, God wanted it transported in a particular manner that He spelled out to the priests.  The ark had loops in which staves were inserted and it was to be “borne,” or carried on the priests shoulders, not on a cart. (Ex. 25:14) Uzzah, as a priest of the Lord, should have remembered that, but he didn’t think it deep what God had said about how it should be carried.  “God should be happy enough that we’re simply bringing it back,” he might have thought.  

Three, Uzzah was saturated with unconfessed sin in his life and presumed to approach the symbol of the Almighty and touch that which is holy to God.  The only time a priest even entered into the immediate presence of God was when the high priest entered the most holy place, once a year, to atone for the sins of the Israelites, and that only after the fasting and prayer of the entire nation to make sure all sins were confessed to God and forgiven by Him before coming into His Holy presence.  But priest and people had become so familiar with disregarding God and what He wanted that they and Uzzah felt comfortable in doing what seemed a well-intended task, and doing it their way.  So God dealt with him, and spared all of Israel in mercy to show them He meant business.  
 
As I listened to the details about how the fire started, the Lord made it clear to me that lately, I’ve been praying for more and more of the fire of the Holy Ghost.  That prayer has become routine, really, but I’ve grown immune to the sense of what it means to be fully inhabited by the Holy Spirit.  There are impure habits and practices that I’ve kept active as “back pocket sins,” and I’ve actually come to believe that God is okay with them and it doesn’t matter to Him that I retain them in my life.  “Why, He’s used me in such powerful ways in the past, and besides, lightening hasn’t struck me so far!”  Ps. 32:1 says, “Blessed is the man…whose sin is covered.” I’ve become comfortable moving about before the presence of God with open sin in my life, not considering how much He abhors sin or how He goes to great lengths to separate me from it by having His own innocent Son die for “my” disobedience, and not realizing that to sin, His very presence is a “consuming fire.” (Heb. 12:29) Yes, He wants to inhabit me and fill me with more of His abiding presence, but my nonchalant attitude toward my sins hovers around me like trapped gasoline fumes waiting to be ignited.  In addition, even though God loves to give mercy, good intentions are not a substitute for obedience.
David and the rest of Israel were spared despite the damages; the mechanic and his assistant were spared despite the damages; I have been spared despite the damages, and all because God wants me to get it right.  “…For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” (1Tim. 2:3,4)

Joel Kibble is a world renowned dynamic motivational speaker, singer, songwriter, 
producer and member of the ten time Grammy Award winning group Take 6.

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