In my dream, I saw many people standing around what I would call an average-sized campfire, but they were not camping per se.
And the voice of the Lord said to me… “How much are my people on fire for me?”
This question has stirred up a lot of thought for me. This is such a good question. Not what others are doing, but am I “on fire” for Jesus?
The center point of this question is not just if I am on fire, but “How Much?” am I on fire for Jesus?
Everyone has some measure of God within them, for we all came from Him. We were all good seeds. We were all ‘planted’ on Earth when we were born. But the scripture says that the wicked one came while everyone slept and began to sow tares among the wheat.
The word “slept” has a very interesting meaning…. We slept. I have had many experiences with both the light side and the dark side visiting me at night. The Lord comes to instruct and give wisdom, while the devil comes to plant strange ideas and thoughts that grow into discord and selfishness… both come to visit us. It is what we do with the information we disseminate that counts.
I have also been someone who “slept” by not taking things as seriously as I should have. Letting other priorities move ahead of God, which, over time, had moved him down my list of importance until he was literally at the very bottom of my list.
Essentially, I ‘slept’ concerning the things of God, and it was to this that the devil was able to come and sow in my mind his tares upon me, and I allowed them to grow for a time. (see my post is there, a devil)
Jesus gave a masterful discourse in this Parable of the wheat and the tares, for He only sows good wheat into the earth, and just like the question asked by the servants, “If only good seed was sown, from whence hath it tares?”
The question is a good one…. With so many people coming forth with so many different beliefs and affirmations nowadays, we wonder where all this comes from.
Satan has only one goal, and that is to take away from God what he loves the most, and that is His children. And the easiest way to do that is to introduce them to those things that are ungodly and sinful, thus barring them from re-entering the kingdom of Heaven after they die and pass on.
So, he (the devil) comes and speaks things into their thoughts, teaching false lifestyles and false commandments, false religious concepts, and falsely enticing them to do that which is against the commandments of God, thereby encouraging them to sin.
Another tactic he uses is to get us so busily engaged in all kinds of things that we move God to the bottom of the priority list and move as far away from God as he can, just from making us super busy. This is one thing that most of us do not realize where we are until we are far removed from God.
satan is sowing tares…into the mind. False ideas that seem real and mistruths. False beliefs and enticements, and if we allow them to fester in our minds, they will grow, and we will remain in that state. Over time, we will become a tare. Whereas when we were originally planted, we were a seed of wheat.
The devil doesn’t have a physical body and cannot force us into anything; instead, he speaks to our minds (self-talk), and he puts thoughts and ideas into our heads… it comes in as if it were our thoughts. This is the deception. Those thoughts are not from us; they are from the evil one, and mislead us into following it… Then, by our choice, we find ourselves either resisting those wrong thoughts or submitting to them. It’s a choice that we make. We choose to become a tare or to stay as wheat.
All things begin in the mind.
God showed me in a dream that the devil has assigned an evil spirit(s) to each living man/woman walking on the earth. Just like we have a guardian angel, you could say that we also have a guardian devil. Whichever one we listen to most will determine how strong an influence it has on us. Those who are always doing so much evil, their guardian devil has a greater influence upon them, and they become the devil’s emissary. Essentially, they are becoming a tare.
We only have ourselves to blame; we stopped listening to the right source… for there is opposition in all things. We need to take the time to ‘weed out’ the tares that we find sown in our beliefs and thoughts. This would include incorrect religious views from man-made doctrines and lifestyle views from wrong secular sources of the popular time period.
Tares are made, they are not born, because God did not plant bad seeds. But because of our faults and imperfections, of which we come to earth to seek to perfect with God’s help, the devil exposes them and draws them out, and we end up wandering on foreign roads and strange paths… Over time, we either move to the left or to the right, it depends on who we choose to listen to… This then defines if we are a tare or a wheat. Jesus also said, “My sheep hear my voice and a stranger’s voice they will not follow.”
This brings us back to the original question: “How much are my people on fire for me?”
Some of us treat God as an “Interest.” Like a commodity, He is only accessed when it benefits us. When it is in our best interest.
But when our lives seem to be fine, we kind of let him go and move into cruise control. Then, when we are in trouble, for our convenience’s sake, we seek to involve God out of our own discomfort. We seek him only to fix things so we can go back to the same ol’ cruise control. We like cruise control. No big ups and no big downs, just steady as she goes… But does steady motion ever get us anywhere? Or does this keep us standing on the fence, being neither hot nor cold but lukewarm?
This is where I was for a very long time. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe, but I wanted cruise control. I wanted to follow my own agenda. Life became comfortable in the space I was in, and therefore God wasn’t needed as much. My lifestyle and situation kept me complacent. Over time, prayer became less prayer, and reading scriptures became less scriptures, until eventually I wasn’t doing anything, too busy with my ventures and activities to include God or even seek him, and eventually I had dropped him completely.
As I ponder this question from God, about being on fire for him, I feel that the correct reference is how much “Zeal” do I have for God. Where is he on my list of priorities, and instead of doing everything my way, why am I not saying, “How can I add God” into these same activities and adjust them to fit His purposes… In doing so, would this not only enhance the activity but also prosper it?
Several years ago, I was asking God to help me understand what I should look for in a career. On this question, I fasted and prayed many times, believing I would receive an answer, and, being patient, I waited until I got it, not doubting it would come. For me, it was when, not if…as I knew that he would answer me.
Then one night, my guardian angel showed up and pulled up a whiteboard to write on. On the board, he drew two lines that went from the top to the bottom of the whiteboard. One line was on the left side, and one line was on the right side. He said that these two lines represented the time of one day. 24 hours.
Then, at the top of the left line, he said, “Some people will choose careers where that is their top priority,” and he wrote the word career at the top of the line. He then drew a long box over the line that took up about 2/3’s of the line as he drew it downward over that same line. Leaving only 1/3 of the line left, and it was the bottom part. He then said that they would have civil activities and family activities, and he wrote those down next, then at the bottom, he wrote God, and said that “because they had so many things that they were involved in, they would put God last on their list, and only if there was time left.”
Then on the line on the right side of the whiteboard, he said that “others would put God first above all else,” and he wrote the word ‘God’ at the top of the line, and the box that he drew a smaller box over the top of the line that represented spending some time where we would put God first. It took about the same amount of time as the left side, except the priority was reversed. It wasn’t necessarily more time, although it could be, but it was the fact that God was put first. That is what made all the difference. Then he wrote the words, Civil and family activities, and at the bottom, he filled the remaining space of the lineup with the word ‘Career.’ (see the illustration below)
Then he looked me directly in the eye and said, “You should choose a career that fits the line on the right side.” And he withdrew, and everything disappeared.
This gave me some really good counsel that helped answer my question. It might not be so much about “how much time”, but the quality of the time that I spend and the ‘zeal’ with which I spend that time in always placing God first. Then everything else would fall nicely into place.
“How much are my people on fire for me?”
How much fire do I have for Jesus? What does that mean? Am I including Him daily as the first priority so that everything else falls into place more easily? Am I giving him my first fruits of the day? Do I have any ‘zeal’ left over in my day for him? Or am I afraid of the judgments of others who see me putting God first?
One last thought…. When the Lord asked all the apostles what they would have Him do after he ascended into heaven? They all said they wanted to be with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven, so Jesus granted their request to be with Him there after they reached a certain age.
But one desired more… and that was John. Perhaps that is why Jesus called him ‘the beloved?’ How much more was he on fire for Jesus? Where was his zeal for the work that Christ allowed him to tarry?
In the deepness of his heart, he desired that not one soul should perish, and seeing that the outcome of the world was only going to grow darker and more evil, it pained him at how many would be lost, and Jesus knew it. He desired that not one soul should perish, and he was willing to put more time into living on the earth, no matter how long it took to save every last soul that he could for Jesus. He had the heart of the Father in him.
How much zeal did John have? What blessing did he receive because of this? Food for thought!