David Diga Hernandez - Symbols of the Holy Spirit: Fire

The fire of God is not emotional; the fire of God is not passion or zeal. The fire of God isn’t even revival. The fire of God is a person, and that person is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the key to passion; the Holy Spirit is the key to spiritual zeal; the Holy Spirit is the key to revival. He himself is the fire of God. When Moses encountered the fire at the bush, he was marked by the presence of God in such a way that he carried a passion for souls. He had a desire to go and deliver a people out of the bondage of Egypt. You and I today, when we come into contact with this fire, something is ignited in us. Jeremiah said that the Word of God, that Spirit that came upon him, was like fire in his bones, and he needed to preach that word. When the fire of the Holy Spirit comes upon you, the Word of God becomes alive, it becomes active, and it becomes something that you feel the urge to declare and speak forth. When the fire of the Holy Spirit touches your life, it consumes all those things that are unholy. When the fire of the Holy Spirit comes upon you, it burns away those character traits in you that are unlike Christ. The fire of the Holy Spirit burns away our idols, burns away our secret sins, and burns away the old identity, leaving just the pure, the tried, and the holy. In Acts chapter 2, verse 3, the Bible says this: «Then what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them.» When the fire of the Holy Spirit shows up, there’s a new way that you speak; there’s a new way that you talk. There’s something different about your language, something different about the words that you choose to use, and the message that you declare. Now, I’m a fourth-generation Christian, a third-generation preacher. I grew up in church, and so, growing up in church, I have these memories of stories that were passed down to me from generations before. My dad is a pastor. When he was a little boy, about ten years old, he attended this church in Maywood, California, where a revival broke out that was unlike anything anyone there had ever seen. It was the 1970s; this was during that movement that swept across America, which many Christian historians look back on and say marked a genuine move of the Holy Spirit. Well, that church he attended was caught up in that movement, where massive amounts of people were saved. My dad told me this story, and he recalls that as a little boy, he remembers the worship services in that small church in Maywood, California, being so vibrant. They were full of life and full of the life of the Spirit. There was energy, but not commotion; there was activity, but not chaos. There was an orderly fashion to their zeal and passion in worship. He says that the worship team was playing, and the people of God were worshiping as they often did. There was this weight of God’s glory, almost like a cloud had rested on that building. People were worshiping all over. He said that miracles were taking place in the front row, in the back row; people were getting saved, people were getting healed, people were getting delivered—all during the worship. This small church in Maywood, California, was experiencing this move of the Holy Spirit, and they were worshiping, magnifying God, praising Him; they were celebrating the presence of God when, all of a sudden, at the back of the church, there was this loud pounding. The ushers began to approach those back doors, trying to assess the situation, but before they could reach the doors, those doors burst open, and in came a team of firemen. They walked into the room with hurried pace, and they had a ready stance as if they were preparing for some type of activity. They went from having ready stances to relaxing as they looked around in bewilderment. The people there said that the firemen were in full gear; they were ready to put out a fire. The usher approached them. My dad overheard this conversation. The usher began to ask them what they were doing there—why they were bursting into their worship service and disrupting it. The fireman explained that their department was being inundated with phone calls from people in the surrounding neighborhood reporting that the church was on fire. People saw flames and smoke coming from the top of the building. People saw actual flames of fire and actual smoke coming out of that tiny church in Maywood, California. But when the firemen arrived and looked around, they saw there was no physical fire there. The usher explained, «Yes, there is a fire here, but the fire that’s here cannot be put out with what you’ve brought. This is the fire of the Holy Ghost.» People of God, hear me now: there is so much more to the presence of the Holy Spirit. His presence is more real than you and I; His presence is more real to me than these cameras are. His presence can be more real to you than those in your everyday life. Those manifestations, those miracles, those demonstrations of His presence—they’re real, and I pray that we would begin to see it in our lives and ministries. Now, the Bible says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 19, «Quench not the Spirit.» Quench not the Spirit. Now, that word «quench» is interesting because it’s the exact same word used.