Written 09.26.2024 | ALL ABOUT CHRIST
The Process of Burning
PRAYER: Lord, You said ask, and it shall be given unto me, seek, and I shall find, and knock, and it shall be open. Lord, today, I ask for Your wisdom. Please, speak to me in the language of my understanding and continually remind me why all this matters (for Your glory and for our good). - In Jesus Name, Amen.
Have you ever watched a video of a person burning? No? Me neither. However, according to Google (YouTube), the skin burns first, and the nerves send signals to your brain, letting you know you are literally on fire. Pain receptors are activated, and you experience a rush of adrenaline, triggering your fight or flight mode. The muscle contracts and burns, and fat acts as fuel for the rest of your organs to engage in the same process. At this point, your nerve endings are gone, along with your perception of pain. It takes about 20-25 seconds for all tissue to burn off, leaving your bones. If there isn’t any external ignition or fuel, the bones will remain, and if there is, they will be reduced to ashes. You see, our skeletal structure can stand the passage of time (it takes a while for the bones to decay), but not the vengeance of fire sustained by fuel. Fire consumes but also cleanses, and it doesn’t pay attention to the principles of time. The same concept can be applied to what I call the theory of holy burning by the all-consuming fire of the Holy Spirit.
To understand the significance of spiritual burning, you need to know how it occurs. Physical burning occurs when there is an ignition and a fuel, and the same goes for spiritual burning. Believing is the fuel, and the Holy Spirit is the ignition. In Acts Chapter 2, it says that on the day of Pentecost, the apostles gathered in one accord, reverencing the Father, and then a rushing mighty wind filled the whole house where they dwelled.
“Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance”. -Acts 2 verse 3-4 KJV
Speaking in tongues is a manifestation of the spiritual burning that they experienced. But for that to happen, the apostles first had to believe. They believed Jesus when He said that He would send them a helper, the Spirit of truth (John 14: 16-17). They believe that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Him (John 14: 11). They believed Jesus when He said that He is, and only is, the way, the truth, and the life, and no one will come to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). They gathered in one accord because they believed in the supremacy and the transcendence of the one who sent them. Believing was the fuel. However, fuel without ignition is like water.
You need the Holy Spirit to ignite that fire in you. You see, when Jesus was alive, the disciples didn’t need any ignition because they had The Fire WITH them, the light in the darkness, Jesus Christ. However, Jesus knew that the apostles couldn’t operate on just believing. Their salvation was not just for themselves. They were saved so others, too, can be saved. For them to do great exploits, they need the fire IN them. The book of Acts, chapter 2, shows this to us. After the disciples encountered the Holy Spirit that day, three thousand souls were won. Before the apostles were sent out on their ministries, they were baptised by the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17). All it took was for them to believe, and then the burning began. The fact that they experienced that extraordinary explosion of the encounter with the Holy Spirit was because they had the fuel to begin with. I can’t stress this enough; they believed.
There is an acute similarity between holy burning and physical burning. When you start burning, you will feel nothing but pain at first. This is because your entire system and the nature of your existence are being simultaneously unraveled and destroyed, string by string. Your body and mind are in constant turmoil, aiming to unveil the root of the pain. During physical burning, the skin falls off the bones and is reduced to ashes. Likewise, during spiritual burning, your past idols and earthly pleasures fade away. You experience physical pain during burning because the nerve endings are still intact. Signals are sent, and receptors are activated. The amygdala works overtime, sending signals to your hypothalamus and anterior prefrontal cortex to do whatever it takes to stop the overload. You feel physical pain during physical burning because your nervous system is still intact and connected to other systems. As for spiritual burning, the pain you feel is the brain's only way of processing the absolute dismantling of intrinsic and extrinsic systems that make up every fiber of your being. With spiritual burning, you are not just burning sins that are under the bounds of flesh, but you are burning principles and laws that are outside the confines of God’s will. Your brain, being so unequipped to comprehend the intricacy of the process, oversimplifies the experience to produce a familiar result: Pain.
When you stub your toe, your brain instantly tries to highlight the focal point of the pain: your toe. However, because your brain isn’t wired for the pain you feel from spiritual burning, it fails to deliver a predicted location of the pain's initial sensation. To deal with this, we try to put out the fire our way because we think that the pain we feel is bad. The emotion (the pain) might feel like profound sadness and unexplainable joy, all happening at the same time. The mind is too fragile to comprehend an experience so transcendent that it instantly categorizes the experience as bad, which is understandable because the very core of your existence is being dismantled as you hold on to nothing but faith that it is being replaced with a piece of the Father. It is a brutal experience. It is beautifully terrifying. During this time, our brains lie to us, telling us that God isn’t with us, and if we let the doubts creep in, unbelief follows, separating us from the one we need the most during the process: Jesus. Then, we are left with scars. Scars tell a story, and the thesis of this story is that you were once on fire. Some people might mistake your scars for current anointing, and others might see them for what they are: remnants of an untold story: “That man of God was once on fire…”
However, if you consecrate yourself, holding on to Jesus as if your life depended on it (because it does), surrounded by a community of people with the same experiences and beliefs, you will still feel the pain, but you will survive it. In the same book of Acts, chapter 2, after the disciples won the souls and people were saved, they communed together, helping one another in the affairs of life and the spirit. You need a community. If you noticed, revivals and encounters usually happen in the midst of people. There is nothing like, I am an island. If you try to do this alone, you might kill the process or worse, revert to what was consumed by the cleansing fire of God. You might ingest your ashes or take on the skin of another animal (idol), hoping to find healing. You have to complete the process to the point where bones are reduced to nothing but dust. At the point when your bones are burning, your pain receptors are gone. You can’t sense that you are on fire but others will sense that you are (Isaiah 60:1). As the fire engulfs your bones, leaving nothing but ashes to be scattered in the wind, there will reach a state in the fabric of space and time where you will transition from holy burning to holy death: A sanctification process that requires absolute surrender.
Holy Death
Do you know who felt the death of Jesus the most? Those who were alive. That’s an obvious answer because it is the truth. The dead cannot mourn the dead; only the living can.
When people ask me how I feel about death, I mostly answer nothing. This is because death in itself is nothing. Don’t get me wrong, the death of our savior is relevant, but it wouldn’t hold any degree of significance in the basis of our faith as Christians if the account of His dying and resurrection was never recorded. When I die, an inevitable occurrence, I will hold no opinion about my death because I am dead. It is only the living that will give significance to my death. Life gives death its relevance. Let’s not get confused. After-death isn’t death itself. Dying isn’t death. Saying that a person is dying does not mean that the person is dead. Death is death, and death, in itself not attached to anything else (life), is nothing. The same principle can be applied to holy death.
With holy death, all your sins and the frailty of your humanity have been wiped clean. When you are dead in Christ, fully surrendered to the supremacy and transcendence of the Holy One, your death in itself is no longer an individualistic countenance. You wouldn’t even know that you are dead. However, those around would feel the heat from your transformation (your death). Ok, stay with me. Your death to you would mean nothing. Your humanity reduces to nothing. People who see you won’t see man (a physical being with multiple flaws and imperfections); they will start to see God, not in a literal sense. They will begin to see the character, power, and grace of Jesus.
A good example would be to look at the Apostle Peter during his visit to Cornelius (Acts 10 KJV). The bible said that while Peter was still speaking the good news of the gospel to all the people, both the righteous and the unsaved, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. The same occurrence happened in Acts 2 and Acts 10. Once you’re burning and you get to a state of holy death, just like fire, others will but to join in. Others will catch on fire, but ultimately, it will be their choice to allow the fire to keep burning or to put it out. If you noticed, when Jesus spoke to the Philistines, they would listen until they got to a point where they became angry and defensive. My friend, if the fire visits you, don’t harden your heart, oh.
There is something I need to emphasize before I conclude. There is a slight difference between physical burning and spiritual burning. Physical fire does not ask for permission when it is ignited. If there is a fuel and a way, it will keep spreading irrespective of whether or not the recipient wants it, brashly. But not so much for spiritual burning. You have to understand that the Holy Spirit is a being. He asks for permission. If you grant him access to only one area of your life (your health) and not your finances, he wouldn’t take away your choice and cleanse that area. He will wait. But remember, just like microwaved food, a half-cold, half-warm, and poorly ventilated food is nasty. Give Him access. He can be trusted. Finish the process.
When you think of holy death and burning, imagine the burning bush. Your flames represent the sovereignty of your maker, marked by the everence of his mercies towards us. The process of your dying should not be held in high scrutiny and remorse, but with rejoicing in hope that one day you shall be like Him. As Jesus took up his cross and showed that the path to eternal salvation is a process of constant rejection of the flesh and refinement of our humanity, so we must treat our burning in the same regard, using Jesus as the true blueprint and relying solely on the will of the Father. Believing in God is one thing, and accepting the help of the Holy Spirit is another, but there is work to be done. Our goal as true believers is to burn to the point where all that is left is nothing but the light of your transformation as we awake to the likeness of Jesus so they can give glory to your Father who is in heaven, the Living God (Matthew 5:14-16 KJV).
PRAYER: Father, if there was a point when I stopped seeking You or staring right at the cross, I ask for Your mercy and for the grace to restore me to my first love, the first time I saw Your face and embraced Your magnificence. I know you are always faithful, but I can’t promise I will be the same. I ask for the grace to sustain my fellowship with You as I wait for the acceptable day of the Lord's return.- In Jesus Name, Amen.