Summary

Show Notes

• God’s fire finishes the work by burning away dross, chaff, and hidden attachments
• The baptism of fire produces peace, freedom, and deeper release in God
• Victory comes through submission, not self-preservation
• God is preparing a clean bride to stand in His presence without reservation
• Transformation comes through yielding, not human effort
• Discipline is evidence of sonship and love
• The fire produces divine responses instead of human reactions
• God is forming His own nature within us
• Each level of fire produces greater fruitfulness
• Fellowship strengthens us through God’s dealings
• The goal is participation in the divine nature

Key Quotes

• “The fire finishes the work because it burns away everything that doesn’t belong in our spirits.”
• “We’re not going forward by our humanity, but by the grace of God and His anointing.”
• “The only thing we have to do is submit—Christ is the One perfecting us.”
• “God is taking us from the human to the divine.”
• “Discipline proves we are sons.”
• “We come out of the fire bearing fruit.”
• “Oneness is born out of His nature, not our soul life.”

Scriptural References

Takeaway

Ken: It’s a fire that finishes the work because it burns out, burns up all the dross, all the things that are holding on that shouldn’t be in our spirits. So when the fire comes, it burns away. And then after the fire burns away, we come into a new level, a new place of release, of freedom. All that we’ve gone through has equipped us, and we’ve been prepared for whatever we have to go through. And then there’s a peace; it’s one thing and then the other. And if you look back on your life and see all the different episodes and things you’ve gone through, we are in a process of having that chaff, having all the stuff that tries to hang onto us, eliminated.

It’s like the three Hebrew boys that went through the fire with Nebuchadnezzar. They didn’t predetermine they were going to come out of it. They simply went in. They were submissive to the Lord. And I think that’s a picture of what we’ve been doing in our lives. After you’ve gone through a little bit of the fire, then the peace of God just floods your heart.

God loves us so much. He wants a clean bride. He wants us to be purified. He wants us to stand in His presence without reservation. Each realm that we reach into, we’re receiving more and more of His presence. That is where the family’s at. We can go through whatever the Lord allows us to go through, and I tell you, the joy of the Lord is our strength, and His peace enables us to move forward. We’re not going forward because of our own functionality, our own humanity. We’re going forward by the grace of God and by His anointing and by His love. We’re going forward.

Monnie: After all of that stuff comes up and God cleans it off, then we can stand in His presence and worship Him in spirit and in truth, ’cause our hearts have been cleansed from all filthiness of spirit. The baptism of fire is what takes care of all of that. I cannot do it in myself. I cannot repent deep enough. When God comes with His fire, which reveals Himself, it becomes a cry of my heart to be the pure bride, to love Him, to worship Him, bow before Him in spirit and in truth.

Ken: And that’s exactly what we’re talking about. Oftentimes we think we have to do something in order to be something. The only thing we have to do is submit to the will of God because the Word says it’s Christ who is perfecting and bringing us forward. We’re being created. We are His workmanship, created for good works. When you submit to Him and submit to His lordship, you go, “Wow, I didn’t think I could go through that.”

Debbie: When Christ stood before Pontius Pilate and when they were scourging Him and doing all kinds of things against Him physically, yet He stood like a lamb before His shearers, He was dumb. He did not say a word, but He knew who He was, and He knew He had to go through that for our sakes.

I think about that every time I put myself in a position of having someone railing on me. The Lord does things, and we come through them, and it gives us a heart for others. It gives us an awareness of how to minister and how to be before Him, because that’s all that matters—our relationship with the Lord. It’s all that matters.

Lois: Whom He loves, He disciplines, and if He doesn’t discipline us, we’re not sons. It has to be. So we’re very grateful for that.

Roger: God really is, present tense, taking us from the human to the divine. That there’s something of His nature that begins to respond to any and all situations, and that scripture comes to mind—bless and curse not. Now, I was thinking about Nathanael. The first thing Jesus said to him when He met him, He said, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” That’s what God is creating for us. There’s something of the Father’s heart that begins to take over and beat in us.

Not only are we not affected by the battle and the assault or the things that may come straight at us, but there’s something in our hearts that’s still able to bless and curse not, and that is something that is not inherent in human nature, really. It’s something God creates in us, of being able to respond because He’s done enough in us. You’re talking about that fire for His nature to respond in any situation and that we’re able to keep seeing how God sees things, to see how He loves those whom He loves. Out of that love, we can see what He’s rejecting for some reason, but it’s all about having His heart.

That’s a big step. That’s a big thing that’s being created in us—that attitude of His nature is the basis of any oneness in Jesus Christ. It’s always born out of His nature, not just something out of our soul life where we’re going to be. One doesn’t mean a thing, but we’re abiding in His nature, and that makes the difference. And that’s something He works in us, creates in us.

Ken: Our way forward is all laid out by God, and He will allow us to go through things to get the things that we cannot see or understand burned off of us by the fire. And whoever He receives and becomes a son is disciplined, and without being disciplined, you’re no longer a son. So what should we do when things like this happen? One word: rejoice, because God is doing something that’s preparing us for the next level.

I don’t think you’re going to go on to the next level by yourself, by your own will. I think you’re going to go into the next level because you submit to the fire and allow that fire to burn off the dross. He is going to have a perfected bride. We’re going to be without spot and without blemish.

Rick: The fire’s constant. We’re never out of the fire because the Lord’s work is so deep, burning so much out, and that we’ve got so many things to overcome. I was just thinking about the scripture, “For by these things He’s granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that’s in the world by lust.” Now, for this very reason, also apply—now, now He gets into it. Now He starts meddling with us. Apply all diligence: in your faith, supply moral excellence; and in your moral excellence, knowledge; in your knowledge, self-control; in your self-control, perseverance; there we go; and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness; and in your brotherly kindness, love. If these qualities are in you and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So there are all these things that happen to us, but this is the purpose, so that we come out of it and we are fruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mike: We don’t realize that God, being who He is and how He operates, He always is considering who we are, and He has to work with us. He’s working with clay. He’s the potter; we’re the clay. And clay has certain limitations. It can be molded and shaped and different things when it’s pliable, but if it starts to harden up, it becomes a little more difficult, and all of a sudden what you’re trying to put together with your hands can fall apart. You’ve got to be careful how much of this or that you can apply to the situation.

I marvel at His love, His grace, and how He knows just how much He can lay upon us. You look at what He allowed His own Son to go through—are we going to go through less than what He went through? I don’t think so. There are various degrees and levels of stuff that we all go through. When you find out some of the things that people go through, you think you’ve had it rough in the Lord, in His chastising you or allowing you to go through certain things, and then you hear from others of what they went through. We just learn to accept His love and His grace, His mercy, accept the fact that He’s right there with us every moment, and He’s leading us by His Spirit, and we’re trying to walk humbly before Him and keep a right spirit.

Ken: Here’s the promise from God: “I’ll not give you any more than you can bear, but with the temptation or the problem or the circumstance, a way of escape.” Now, what is the way of escape? It’s in Him. We trust in Him with all of our hearts, and we don’t lean on our own way of working things out. Acknowledging Him, God is in the process of creating what He wants in our life. That’s the sole process that we’re in.

Jim: As we’re going through this process, God’s bringing the fire. We’re coming out the other side into a new level. I truly believe that by talking about these things with our brothers and sisters, that’s part of the learning process, because I don’t think I ever went through one of these dealings and ended up understanding all of the right answers myself. Because I had brothers and sisters of faith around me, I was able to talk about a lot of these things. I was given help many times in terms of how to keep my spirit right. It’s very difficult, and having somebody else feeding that to you during those times was very important to me. I don’t think I would’ve made it through many of the dealings that I went through on my own.

Roger: You go through the things, the pressures, the fire, and then one day, like you guys have been expressing, you look up and, hey, the joy of the Lord, the peace. That’s the whole revelation of ascending in Him level by level, that we come to a level that we can’t deal with, and God works in us—whatever you want to call it, just pick your term, the fire, the dealings—but there’s a completeness God works in us in that level. And then all of a sudden, we’re out of it, and there you are, bearing the fruit of the things that you went through. ’Cause that’s how we’re walking with God—one step, one level, one realm at a time we come into and possess our inheritance in a greater way, and then we move in more of God than we ever have before.