A Consuming Fire

Over the past week I experienced God's faithfulness and beauty in so many ways I have never fully experienced before. The Lord spoke to me in many different ways, in particular with two sets of lyrics.

The first came when I was worshipping and being still before God underneath the blanket of stars, and was praying for the Cal Poly campus and seeking His voice in it. And this picture kept coming to me, of someone on their knees, arms stretched out in beauty, face looking upward, completely consumed. And in that, God told me that they will revere Him in this place. Though I don't know how or when, I know this will be true.

Revere You in this Place
Glory like they've never seen
The glory all to our God and King
Makes them stand in sheer awe and fall to their knees
They will revere You in this place
Passion like they've never known that sweeps them
off their feet and into Your arms
The passion that fully ablazes and consumes
They will revere You in this place

Chorus
And we rise and we stand to sing Your praise
and we kneel and we fall to say worthy is Your name
and we cry and we pray that You wake up this place
So they will revere You in this place
So they will revere You in this place

Redemption rains down all around fully abound
Redemption wipes off the scorns on their faces
Redemption shakes their world in a way they never knew before
They will revere You in this place
They will revere You in this place, O Lord


The next came more as a result of being completely taken aback and swept off my feet by the beauty of our Lord as He pursues my family with a passion like I've never seen before, and it was all I could do to hold back the tears and let them flow freely later.

Unwavering faithfulness
drips with beauty that allows
those who were once blind to now see
your unchanging faithfulness
radiates with majesty that sweeps Your people off their feet

Let the sweet sweet anthems of old
come rising up and burst forth
praise be to You in this place
praise be to You in this place, O Lord.

Consuming love songs
capture our hearts and change our ways
no longer will we live by ours but now
rather Your ways all of our days
Your unswerving glory captivates us like never before


And the last thing I want to leave you with is this:
We shouldn't ask the how or when of what He's doing until we understand the who and why. We must understand first who He is: We need to know what kind of God and Father we believe in before we can testify of Him to others. We also need to know why we are testifying Him to others: is it because it’s simply a command, or is it because our heart is bursting with so much unspeakable joy that we’ve never known before that we must tell of who He is and what He's done? After those two are answered, then we know that the how and when aren’t so relevant anymore, because we know who He is and why we do the things we do, and we know that He will move through us. We then know that the how happens simply by His mercy, power, and grace, and the when is by His more than perfect timing.

May He consume you as He's consuming me...