More than a year ago, the Lord spoke through Jazz, and He said --- “29AD, the anointed musicionaries, called to love and serve the poor by bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth through Christian fire music. Christian fire music --- spirit-filled music that touches the soul and sets the fire in every heart to worship God which brings miraculous healing and transformation.”
I personally didn’t understand what “Christian fire music” was, even when there was an accompanying description --- “spirit-filled music that touches the soul…” Isn’t it that the Christian music you are listening to right now, the likes of Hillsong or Himig Heswita, “touches your soul”. What is it then? How is it different?
It was until recently that Couples for Christ went through a lot of transformation, from which came an expanded vision statement of the community. We are now more than “families in the Holy Spirit renewing the face of the earth”. I could only listen in amazement when it was said that in our beloved community, we now are “…Family Evangelizers That Set the World on Fire”. On fire?!? Christian Fire?!?
Try shouting “fire!” in your neighborhood, and for sure you’ll get a panic reaction. But if I were Abraham or Jacob, I would have a different reaction when I see fire --- maybe I would panic for I doubtlessly would melt in my unworthiness. Nonetheless, I would bow down in reverence and awe, for the significance of fire during their time connotes God’s presence and glory. Nothing is more reassuring for me if I were one of the Israelites in exodus to the Promised Land, for it is written that God guided them in the desert in a form of a cloud by day and flaming fire by night.
I marvel at the truth of what God Himself said that He made us in His image and likeness. You just need to look at me and must agree that God must be a handsome man! Kidding aside, I am simply amazed how God must have decided on this. He could have made us in the image and likeness of a donkey or a monkey. Or He could have settled for a dog, a namesake’s backward, to be like Him. But He instead chose man and woman to be in His image. As He breathed life into us, He too must be have breathed His spirit of fire in us --- a guiding fire that was eminently holy with the Israelites, a fire that consumes but doesn’t burn up, a fire that lives, and makes us live.
All of us have this God’s living fire in us. But maybe in our weaknesses, we continue to douse it with our sins. Even then, God must love us so much because, all throughout history, He kept on breathing fire into us so that we will once again be guided by that “flaming fire at night”. Yet we still persist on sin, and little by little, we extinguish the fire God has breathed in us, and the world around us starts getting darker and darker.
Because of this, I sense a little frustration when Jesus said “I have come to bring fire in the earth, and how I wished it were already kindled.” (Luke12) How He wished? How He wished??? The all-powerful Son of God who, with just a snap of a finger, can send all our sinful lives to a burning end. But like His ever loving Father, He doesn’t. He can only wish that His image and likeness still burn in the hearts of every men.
But, in contrast to this divine frustration, I too sense a joyful commandment from Jesus’ words --- “to bring fire in the earth”. As His disciples, as Christians, we must continue His mission. We too must continue to bring fire in the earth. How else can we do this but with the fire that God has breathed into us through our music. How else but through this Christian fire music that would set the world on fire.
I am reminded by how God showed Himself to Moses in a burning bush. And as God called, Moses responded, “Here I am”. In our calling to bring fire to the earth, to enkindle the fire in every heart, to bring back the image and likeness of God in everyone, this can only be our response --- “here I am”.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire." --- Hebrews 12:28-29
