What Do Bonfires and Worship Have in Common?
Do you enjoy bonfires? Do you like being able to pile the wood high and watch it all burn?
I do! I love enjoying bonfires!
Fire is a wonderful and beautiful thing. There's something to precious and intimate about gathering around the fire with friends. We get to be cozy, we get to be close, and we get to enjoy the light and warmth that fire brings together. It is a space of intimacy.
Speaking of intimacy, did you know that God desires intimacy with you? God desires to be close to us, just like how you want to be close with friends who gather around a fire with you. God wants us to be able to sit and enjoy His company and His presence. That was the whole reason Jesus came to die on the cross: to take the punishment of sin, the one thing keeping us from Him, so that we could come to a place of relationship and unity with God.
All He wants is to be beside us and enjoy the things that we enjoy, and in this scenario, that would be the fire!
The Bonfire
God has shown me recently that the place for us to meet is at the fireside. He's shown me visions this last week of the two of us sitting at a firepit. We pile logs on together and make this large bonfire that we get to sit and enjoy, together.
I believe that God is intentional about the things He shows me, so this vision definitely has meaning, especially when it comes to relationship with Him. This fireside is a place of intimacy, a space to draw close to Him, but you know what else? It is a space to worship Him.
In the Old Testament, God shows up in fire. When God encountered Moses, He showed up in a burning bush (Exodus 3:2). When God led the Israelites out of slavery, He showed up as a cloud by day and a fire by night (Exodus 13:21-22). In 1 Kings 18, when Elijah challenges the 200 prophets of Baal to see who's God is real, our God shows up and consumes the offering of Elijah AND all the water on and around it with great fire from heaven.
God is there in the fire to show how He an all consuming fire. Deuteronomy 4:24 says that God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. He takes everything we offer Him--our hearts, our lives, our worship--because He wants us wholly and fully. He doesn't want a single thing left out or put aside when we come to Him. He wants all of us.
This is where the beauty of worship comes in.
What is Worship?
What is worship? It's actually not singing songs for God, though singing is an expression of worship! Worship is connecting with God, having a heart to heart with Him. But even then, what does it mean to connect with God?
The other day, I spent time in worship in my room, and it was the most powerful experience I've had in a while. I was straight bawling and had all this snot coming down as I was singing and playing my guitar before the Lord.
What made this experience so powerful was not the songs I was singing, but the fact that I was connecting with God. I was open to Him and telling Him the things that I care about. I was telling Him about every worry I had while I was singing, I was telling Him about the things and people I love, and I was asking Him to take care of me and my friends. I was giving Him permission to have control of my life and to take the things I was worried about into His hands, because He will take care of them.
Romans 8:28 says that God will work all things together for the good of those who love Him, but God cannot do the work in something you are not willing to give to Him. If you are holding on to something, then you are the one trying to put things together and make them work, not God. See, the point of worship is surrender. It is an opportunity to place whatever is worrying you, whatever brings you pain, whatever brings you joy, whatever you want to celebrate, everything that is on your heart or mind at the altar before God and let go of it.
We get to surrender our hearts, minds, and lives to God. This is the sacrifice that we get to bring before God in worship.
For You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
You take no pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and a contrite heart,
O God, You will not despise.
Psalm 51:16-17
The Fire of Worship
Burnt sacrifices were how the Israelites honoured God and worshipped Him in the Old Testament. They would burn animals and bread and grain before God, and He would consume it with the fire that was always burning before the temple.
But God wants more than burnt offerings. Burnt offerings and sacrifices were great as an action to honour God, but they had one problem: they did not bring the Israelites' hearts closer to God (Hebrews 9:12). If anything, the constant slaughters and sacrifices nulled the Israelites' hearts to the weight and punishment of sin: death (Romans 6:23). Whenever they sinned, they had to slay an animal to pay the punishment for them so that they would not be the ones who died when they came into God's presence.
God is too holy for sin to co-exist with Him. That is why the law of the Old Testament practically required perfection of us so that we would not die of our sins when we came into God's presence.
But no one could ever achieve perfection, so why try? What's one more animal to slaughter to allow us be close to God?
The Israelites became numb with all the sacrifices and slaughters that didn't help them draw close to God. They could never bridge the gap between them and God, and neither can we. Nothing we could ever do would allow us to come close to salvation--a place where nothing is between us and God.
This is why Jesus came and died for us. He became the perfect sacrifice for us so that we would no longer have the burden of perfection or condemnation under the law, where we would have to pay the punishment of sin (death) with our own lives. He paid the price once and for all through His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.
All of this was done out of a display of love.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
God wants your heart. He couldn't bear to be apart and distant from you, so He made a way for us to come to Him through the cross. He wants to connect with you in a deep way where you bring everything before Him, and He will accept it. He will accept you.
This is the motivation behind our worship. He gave everything to have you, and the least we can do is give Him our life and our attention! We can let Him into our lives through worship.
The things you offer to Him in worship, He will fully accept and consume. He's the all consuming fire, after all!
The Old Testament law required that fire be kept in front of the temple at all times. It was a wonderful reminder of God's all-consuming nature, but guess what? God doesn't live in physical, man made temples anymore. If you've given your life to God, He lives inside of YOU (1 Corinthians 6:19)! You are the temple that the Holy Spirit (who is also God!) chooses to live in each and every day!
Because how much closer can you get to someone than inside their skin? God wants to be as close to you as possible!
Since the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, and God is an all consuming fire, there is a fire always burning inside you. You have easy access to that space of intimacy before the fire of the Lord, where it is just you and Him.
This is the beauty of our worship! We get to be cozy with God, we get to be close with God, and we get to enjoy the light and warmth that fire brings together. This is a space of intimacy.
What does your fireside worship to God look like? What are the things you are piling on the altar of your heart in worship so that you and God can have a wonderful bonfire together?
Get to it and start sharing those things with Him! (And here with me, if you so desire to share~)
