…baptize you with fire…

…baptize you with fire…

“He shall baptize you with fire” (Matt. 3 vs 11).

Fire is strangely intense and intrinsic. It goes into the very substance of things. It somehow blends with every particle of the thing it touches.

There are the severe trials that come to minds more sensitive, to the minds that have more points of contact with what hurts; so that the higher the nature the higher the joy, and the greater the avenues of pain that come.

And then there are deeper trials that come as we pass into the hands of God, as we pass from the physical and intellectual into the spiritual nature.

When they first come, we shrink back from their unnatural and fearful breath, and we say: “Oh, this cannot be from the hand of a loving Father! This cannot be necessary to me.”

And then come the pains and sufferings from God’s own hand, when He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver, when He lets it burn, until it seems that we must be burned to ashes, and we are, indeed, at last burned to ashes.

But we must get the victory through faith. The moment you cease to fear it, that moment it ceases to harm you. He says, “The flames shall not kindle upon you.”

Culled from: Days of Heaven on Earth by A. B. Simpson

1 One thing I of the Lord desire,
For all my path hath miry been,
Be it by water or by fire,
O make me clean, O make me clean.

Refrain:
So wash me, Thou, without, within,
Or purge with fire, if that must be,
No matter how, if only sin
Die out in me, die out in me.

2 If clearer vision Thou impart,
Grateful and glad my soul shall be;
But yet to have a purer heart
Is more to me, Is more to me. [Refrain]

3 Yea, only as this heart is clean
May larger vision yet be mine,
For mirrored in its depths are seen
The things divine, the things divine. [Refrain]

4 I watch to shun the miry way,
And stanch the springs of guilty thought;
But, watch and struggle as I may,
Pure I am not, Pure I am not. [Refrain]