Kingdom Calling Blog…

I spent some time worshipping and was just putting the hoover round when I heard God say…”keep the home fires burning”.

As I was unpacking this with Him I realised that the first survival tip if you want to stay alive is to build a fire. It is in the top 5 tips in every survival guide I looked at online. In fact, to survive for any length of time your number one task is to not allow the fire to go out at any cost. It is the means of keeping warm, cooking food and purifying water so it’s drinkable and also provides safety keeping wild animals away. So as you can see pretty fundamental for life.

To keep the home fires burning means: To maintain daily routine and provide the necessities of life in a home or community.

Just as it is in the natural often it is the same in the spirit, and in our everyday walk with God we do indeed need to keep the home fires burning and what an interesting meaning of the expression He dropped into my spirit.

To keep the fire burning, the passion and zeal for Jesus and His presence at all costs, is definitely something that benefits from a daily routine because we can’t survive and thrive if our fire burns down and we are just surviving, getting by on the embers. This maintaining of the fire for God needs to be a priority and very much part of our daily routine and walk with God.

I felt the Father go on to say that “you can’t survive and thrive by sitting around someone else’s fire”.

It’s not wrong to get around those people who are burning for God and this will do us good and help keep our fires burning, but we cannot rely on their fire and must have our own fire burning at home. We can spend time with those burning ones, and we can go to conferences and receive, but we can’t survive and thrive long term lurching from other fires and going conference to conference but never taking the time in the secret place to build and maintain our own. We must prioritise and tend it daily.

Getting around burning ones and going to conferences is a helpful way to gather kindling, but always with the purpose of putting it on the fire we have at home. Ultimately we have to be responsible for our own fire.

We see in the Old Testament that the priests were responsible for maintaining the fire on the altar where they burnt the offering before the Lord. God made it very clear how this would look and the importance of keeping it burning and not letting it go out.

Lev 6:12 ¹² The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out. Every morning the priest is to add firewood and arrange the burnt offering on the fire and burn the fat of the fellowship offerings on it.

Obviously we no longer have to have a priest interceding for us to burn sacrifices at the alter because of Jesus’ completed work on the cross as He was the sacrifice on our behalf. But the fact it’s in the bible just brings home the importance of keeping the fire burning and bringing our lives daily to the altar in a sacrificial way.

It’s the same with the oil we have from the time spent in His presence. We can’t give our oil to others to keep their lamp burning because it’s from a lifestyle of worship of Him in the secret place that keeps our own oil topped up. There is no shortcut for oil and fire and it comes from your personal walk and history with the Father. In a world where we want instant this and that it’s so easy to fall into thinking that we can just get the intimate relationship with God that we see in others and want to shortcut the process but, spoiler alert…we can’t.

Matt 25 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. ² Five of them were foolish and five were wise. ³ The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. ⁴ The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. ⁵ The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. 6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ ⁷ “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸ The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’⁹ “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’¹⁰ “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.¹¹ “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’¹² “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’¹³ “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour

At the end of the day we don’t want to be caught short and we don’t know the day of Jesus’ return so whilst we wait we are to keep the home fires burning and our oil topped up ready to receive the bridegroom.

How are you going to keep your home fires burning?

What will you need to prioritise for your fire to keep burning?

Is there anything in your life that is causing your fire to die down?

How can you help those around you who want to grow the fires in their lives?