Ken: All of your sufferings, everything you are going through, is designed by the Lord to complete you. All of the chaff that you’ve carried along—we were born with chaff—and when we accept Christ, our spirit becomes alive.
Lois: What is chaff? It’s the old nature.
Ken: It’s the old nature, and all of that’s coming off. Hey, guess what? We’re not doing it. We’re just submitting our hearts to the Lord, and He’s doing it by the fire that we’re going through because God’s completing us.
(Yes.)
Taking off the chaff, burning it off. It’s not going to come off by talking. It’s not going to come off by knowing how to deal with it—that doesn’t work. This is God’s anointing, His fire, to deal with the chaff in all of our lives.
Lois: The Scripture says our God is a consuming fire. God is a fire, and if you’re going to walk with Him, you’re going to partake of it.
Ken: So many Scriptures that we’ve heard about the fire—when the 120 were in the upper room and the fire appeared on their heads—it was the result of the prophecy of John the Baptist who said, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
That fire is there with a purpose, and we are being perfected—brought into the place where we can absolutely be in the presence of the Lord. He’s a holy God, and He says we must be holy.
Lois: We want to be a moth to the flame.
Ken: Absolutely. A lot of times we look at the fire—we look at what we’re going through—and I don’t know that we complain, but we say, “Why?”
This is the why. Rejoice that the fire is burning in your life. It’s creating something in you that you can’t do by yourself. And just think back on your lives—all of the times that God brought you through something that was so extreme that you thought there was no way out. He’s the one doing the work.
We are the ones that He’s using to do the work. So as long as that fire is burning in your life, it’s a sign—it is absolutely a sign—you’ve been chosen.
Lois: So think it not strange.
Ken: Peter said that.
Lois: It’s for the testing of your faith.
Mike: We need to see ourselves like the three Hebrew children when they went into the fiery furnace and were touched by the flame.
We’re stepping into things with the fire of God. It’s doing away with and burning, like you say, the chaff off of us and all of these things that need to be done—but we’re not being burned. “He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.”
By one offering, He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. If you don’t know it, folks, we are the ones being sanctified. We’re willing to go through whatever it takes, Lord, for this to happen. It’s Your Word, it’s Your will, and it’s going to be done Your way.
Cindy: We are the chosen ones that He has chosen to be sanctified and to do His works in the Kingdom, which is now on this earth.
You chose me. I chose You. I’m walking with You no matter what.
Ken: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers us out of them all.” That has to ring in our spirits as we’re walking with God and going through the things we’re going through.
Lois: When your obedience is complete—when He’s burned up everything, and you’ve submitted to it, and you’ve loved Him with all your heart—when your obedience is complete, then I will judge all unrighteousness.
And we were reading that Scripture about judgment starting, and if you looked in the Greek, I think he said it was from the house of God. Yeah—it’s coming from the house of God.
So once our obedience is complete, judgment will flow—not because we’re mad at anybody or we want anything wrong—but because our spirits, just like God, are a consuming fire. So will we be, to help cleanse the earth and people of their chaff.
Monnie: God is consuming us with a fire—but also, with that consuming fire by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, what we speak is a baptism of fire that brings forth His Kingdom and His total judgment on all of the forces coming against us.
With the baptism of fire, with all that, God is working through us, in us. I am not a victim.
Ken: No.
Monnie: We are more than conquerors. God is putting the fire through us, in us, taking away all the Adamic nature. At the same time, we move with the authority of the purification that has been imparted to us through that fire, where we have the purity to speak with that fire.
We are people who stand in the presence of God.
Lois: And when God starts throwing the matches in your life, it’s only going to burn up the wood, the hay, and the stubble. (That’s right.) It’s not going to touch anything that’s good. The gold and the silver are going to shine brighter and refine. Love the fire!
Ken: If you’re called and you’re chosen, then you’re going to go through the fires. You’re going to be like one of those three Hebrew boys—all the things that have been binding you burned off.
Dale: God is leading us through what you might say are one-time experiences. The chaff can only come off once. After the chaff has been removed from that wheat, then it moves on down the line of processing.
And the three Hebrew children—just like you said—everything was burnt off of them. The Day of Pentecost could not have happened without the fire. What we see is a fulfillment of the Day of Pentecost that brought us into the preparation for Christ coming—the Father coming at Tabernacles—because without that preparation, there would not have been the level of holiness within us to be able to greet Him as He came.
Once the fire is finished in your life, guess what happens to it? It goes to work in judgment. That’s the fire that we see a lot of today. We see a lot of the fire in judgment, and not in the house of the Lord, because it releases it to go on and do what it’s supposed to do. Finish up with us, Lord. Finish up Your fire in our lives.
Ken: All of these things are taken off of our lives. How does that happen? And you don’t think about it—all of a sudden, things that bothered you so badly are gone.
We are constantly in change. We do not stay the same. It’s an ongoing thing of change because we’re coming into His likeness in every aspect.
Everything is going to be perfectly aligned to the God that we know and love and serve.
