Holiness Revival: WATER AND FIRE

Water and fire
Usually these two put each other out. Water is used to bring fires under control and eventually extinguish them.  The extreme heat generated by fires can literally lick every drop of water from the ground.  During this revival however the two things, water and fire, have been getting on well together without one putting the other out. When we raise songs such as 'Let it rain'  or ' A special rain is falling'  we very much sense God's rain falling upon us.   God does come as the waters. Sometimes his coming is revealed and sensed like the flow of a river among us, with all the abundance and power and overflow.

But the unusual thing for me has been that almost as soon as we touch this river or come under the rain of God, I begin to feel the heat (and literally fire) of God over me. So I begin to speak this out, calling out "Fire, fire, fire."  In a number of our meetings all that I could pray or speak out was "Fire, fire, fire."  No other word would come out as I laid hands on people and prayed for them.  Later on, many testified that they received the same heat and fire into their bodies with many varying manifestations. I've tried to stop myself when I have thought about the incongruence between rain, rivers (both water) and fire  but I have not been able to hold back. Sometimes our praise team is still singing about the rain and there I am speaking about the fire. And the surprising thing has been that they are not putting each other out, but they both are getting stronger. Then this morning in the prayer meeting I felt God gave me some understanding about it.

In our country we have a massive hydro-electric dam, the Akosombo Dam, which has one of the world's largest man-made lakes sitting behind it. The water from the lake is channeled at great speed into power-generating turbines deep down in the earth at the foot of the dam and these produce the electricity which is transmitted all over our country and into other West African States as well.  When this electricity arrives in a home or in a factory, it produces light in one kind of equipment, sound in another, turning movements or gyrations in another and heat in yet another.

The initial source of the energy which is behind all these different forms of 'manifestations' of the electric power is the water.  It seems to me that God's power which has been coming among us like the rain, or like the river of God, produces sounds (sometimes very loud noises) when it hits one person, while in another person it produces movement (sometimes so violent we have to rush and help support them). When this same power hits me, it turns into real heat in and over me. And all I can say is "Fire, fire, fire."  It is the same power of God doing the different things in different people. And so of course the water does not put out the fire and the fire does not put out the water, rather: more rain - more fire; more of the river - more fire; more water - more fire.

Now I can get my brain around it and know that I can be asking for more rain and speaking out his fire all in the same breath. More, Lord!  More water, more fire!