I see a fire burning...

I frequently lie awake at nights and wonder why my husband does not wake himself up with the volume of his snoring! Sometimes it can be quite loud! I suppose that I should not have been surprised when the thunder storm last night didn’t wake him up either. It wasn’t just the grumbles and rumbles that you sometimes get, but really loud cracks and snaps and crashes. It was really loud! But did the man even stir – not a bit!

It seems an automatic response for me to start counting when the lightning flashes. Divide the number by four and you can calculate how far away the storm is. I never managed to count further than five! That is one and a quarter miles away. The lightning was just flashes in the sky. The noise was much more impressive! I actually thought about going outside – not just to take the washing down from the line, but to lie on my back on the grass in the playing field and just watch the show! Then the thought of being zapped and fried like an egg did not appeal!

When I lived in Cyprus one of the most stirring things was to watch the lightning over the Troodos mountains. We lived far enough away not to hear the thunder part of it, but the lightning was really spectacular. It was not just flashes of light, but proper forks and things. It wasn’t just plain, boring white either, but rainbow colours of light flashing and illuminating the clouds.

A number of years ago, someone brought a prophecy over me that God’s lightning would fall on me. I would be spiritually zapped and would be energised to do what God anointed me to do. Holy Ghost fire blazing through me – that kind of thing! I also remember singing a chorus at the time – “I see a fire burning…I see a nation turning..” The idea was of God’s revival fire hitting us and blazing with purity.

At the time I had recently watched a nature documentary about lightning. The film makers had slowed down the film, frame by frame. Just as the lightning from above struck the earth, there was this small fork of light coming up from the ground. The lightning coming down didn’t just land anywhere – it touched the lightning that was going upwards from the ground! The light from the ground was generated by the activity of positive and negative ions in the ground and the lightning from above was being attracted to it! There was nothing random, in a sense of where the lightning would strike – it struck where the ground was generating the ions. The ground was generating the ions in response to the ions being generated in the air!

When Elijah built his altar and placed his bull upon it, and then doused the sacrifice with water, the bible account tells us that the lightning fell. The fire consumed the bull, the wood, the water and even burnt the stones. The fire fell in a very exact spot. It was as if Elijah’s faith and fervour were like those positive and negative ions building up on the earth and God’s fire was attracted to it. God is always attracted to our demonstrations of faith. The greater our demonstration of faith is, the greater His display of glory is.

I was musing about this prophecy about being zapped by Holy Spirit fire. God impressed on me the need to generate the spiritual ion activity in my heart – the negative ions being a total hatred towards sin, the positive ions being a whole-hearted pursuit of righteousness. Not either one – but both. Too often I embrace the pursuit of righteousness in my Christian walk, but too often do not take as harsh a stand of sin in my life than I aught to.

I am wondering now if I ever experienced that lightning bolt that was prophesied. Just because someone speaks a word does not make it happen. These things need to be coupled with faith to bring them into being. The very fact that I am wondering makes me think that perhaps I never did. I am sure that people struck by lightning don’t forget it! Maybe all I ever settled for were the rumbles and grumbles of thunder, but I never managed to generate enough ionic activity to attract a bolt of lightning!

That was then – some ten or more years ago! Hmm…it is amazing the things that come to mind when you are cowering underneath the covers as the storm rages outside the house!