A Fire Encounter

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Isaiah 6:5 

The Word of God is full of people who had fiery encounters with God. John the Baptist said that when the Holy Ghost comes, He will baptize you in His power, and He will baptize you in fire. God wants to breathe fire into His people. It’s what happened to Isaiah in the sixth chapter when he walked into the temple, and suddenly the curtain opened, and he caught a glimpse of heaven. And when he saw heaven, the angel of the Lord immediately picked up a coal from the altar and touched his lips with fire. Isaiah had a fire encounter, and he was never the same.

When the fire of God comes, you will be changed. The fire will touch your worship and produce passion in your praise. You won’t be able to stand in church with a bored expression and your arms crossed. When you get the fire of God that comes with the presence of the Holy Ghost, your praise sounds different. Suddenly, you have the liberty in your spirit to give God what the Bible refers to as “perfected praise.”  

Jesus, when talking about praise that honors God said that “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He has perfected praise.” (Matthew 21:16) In other words, perfected praise can be seen in children. Why is that? Children are unashamed and uninhibited and don’t care what anybody thinks.

There is a true story about a man who went to the doctor and was told that he had cancer in his tongue. The doctor did everything he knew to do to treat the cancer. The man was a believer but he was not cured. And so the surgeon came and said to the man, “I’m so sorry, I have bad news. The only way we can contain that cancer that’s in your tongue is to amputate your tongue.” They rolled him into the surgery room and before they put him to sleep they asked him, “Sir, do you have anything you would like to say before we take the power of speech from you forever?” He sat up in the bed. Nurses, doctors and attendants were standing around in their surgery gloves and masks. And he started singing at the top of his voice, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.” He kept quoting that old hymn until he got to the last verse. They said there was not a dry eye in that surgery room when he started singing the last verse of that old hymn. It goes like this. “Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing thy power to save. When this poor lisping, stammering tongue, lies silent in the grave.” Then he laid down and said, “I’m ready.” Now that is the kind of perfected praise that will honor God.

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