"Come be the fire inside of me"

---I want to be consumed by God. I could just scream it!

I went and saw the movie 2012 today, and man, talk about a true horror movie! The whole time I was watching it God kept speaking things into my heart about what He's been revealing to me over the past few days. It has to do with fire. Think about fire for a moment. It CONSUMES anything it touches- burns, destroys, completely gets rid of everything in it's path. I searched the word "fire" in the bible the other day and found so many scriptures it blew my mind! All the way from Moses and the burning bush, to the disciples being baptized with tongues of fire, to fire in His eyes when He returns in Revelations, God is constantly relating Himself and revealing Himself to us through fire! One of my favorite passages that I found was in Song of Solomon verse 8:6. It says this...

"Put me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the Lord."

Did you catch that? His love is a flame of fire! Fire. FIRE! Take His love and pour it into the human heart and there should be nothing left but His love! I realized that so many times I've taken the love of God and patched it over my heart as something that's just there to mend the wounds; to cover up the pain. But I've had it so wrong... I've really received everything BUT His love! Because when you "give your heart to Jesus" nothing else should dictate you. When He holds your heart, nothing can touch it but Him. It's sealed. Your heart's safe. Storms will come and try and take Him away from you, but that's when the true test arises. That's when you fight to keep your eyes on Him no matter how much everything else looks better.
No matter how much more "real" the world looks,

you fight!...

Because like I saw in the movie 2012 tonight, everything will one day pass. When nothing's left but God, I keep asking myself if that will be enough. Will I let God consume me now,,, or when it's too late??? Because, as much as this scares me to say, He will consume all of us one way or the other. I don't like to say will I LET Him consume me now because it's not something you do out of duty. You don't give your heart to God because it's the "right" thing to do. You give yourself to God the moment you realize He's already given you everything. You fall in love with Him! I've come to see that talking about God, thinking about God, doing things for God, shouldn't come through any other way but love. Because like Francis Chan so beautifully writes "When you're wildly in love with someone, it changes everything." You don't change by trying to change and trying to be "right," it comes through love. It's so beautiful. I just want to think about this all day and do nothing else haha. For real.

I'm going to keep writing... I've been reading this amazing book. It's called "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan and this book is changing my life. I read my favorite chapter so far last night and I want to go and read it again tonight! The whole chapter focuses on loving God and what that really looks like. He opened the chapter by relating how we see God to how we see earthly love relationships. I'll quote (because it's so good)-
"When you're truly in love, you go to great lengths to be with the one you love. You'll drive for hours to be together, even if it's only for a short while. You don't mind staying up late to talk. Walking in the rain is romantic, not annoying. You'll willingly spend a small fortune on the one you're crazy about. When you are apart from eachother, it's painful, even miserable. He or she is all you think about; you jump at any chance to be together."

Now..... is that how you feel towards God? I can honestly say that for me, most days it's not. Praying can be so hard, reading the Word can be so insanely boring, and even some days I want to dig myself into the world and hide. But, the amazing thing is, God's love never fails. He will never stop chasing down my heart until it's completely His. He loved me when I was in sin; He died for me when I wanted nothing to do with Him! He's soooo proven His love, yet sometimes it's still sooooo hard to love Him and trust Him. This world is so annoying, why must it get in the way of our One true love! I just want the mask to be torn down! I want to know the One whom my heart belongs! God's recently invaded everything my life like a forest fire. It is unbearably painful and I want to turn away in shame, but I'm not. I'm fighting to know Him. Because I want God to be enough.

The fire is painful.
But it must come in order to be refined.
Yes, it must come.
Consume me Lord.