Set My Heart on Fire: Ignite Your Confidence, Boldness, and Passion for God

By J. Lee Grady

Set My Heart on Fire will help readers to live in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, walk confidently in boldness, and break free from life-controlling bondage, habits, and generational tendencies.
 
It is essential to remain in a state of spiritual intimacy and walk closely with God despite the many worldly distractions. This book will remind readers that the key to doing so is to nourish a close relationship with the Holy Spirit.
 
This powerful teaching covers topics such as:

• Seven roles of the Holy Spirit
• Benefits of a prayer language
• Why you need boldness
• Learning to minister in the Spirit
• Staying on fire in the dry seasons

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781629986111

J. Lee Grady

J. Lee Grady es un autor, galardonado periodista, ministro ordenado y es director del ministerio internacional The Mordecai Project, el cual enfrenta los abusos a las mujeres. Es el autor de cuatro libros, incluyendo: 10 mentiras que la Iglesia le dice a las mujeres y 25 preguntas difíciles sobre las mujeres y la Iglesia. Además, fue el editor de la revista Charisma por once años. Lee y su esposa, Deborah, tienen cuatro hijas.

Book preview

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Chapter One

TURN UP THE HEAT!

Preparing Your Heart for a Personal Revival

We may not preach a crucified Savior without being also crucified men and women. It is not enough to wear an ornamental cross as a pretty decoration. The cross that Paul speaks about was burned into his very flesh, was branded into his being, and only the Holy Spirit can burn the true cross into our innermost life.¹

—A. B. SIMPSON (1843–1919)

FOUNDER OF THE CHRISTIAN AND MISSIONARY ALLIANCE

BECAUSE I SPENT my younger years in Georgia’s sweltering humidity and then lived many of my adult years in Florida, I’m not a fan of cold weather. I’d rather go barefoot in hot sand than trudge through snow in heavy boots. To me, it’s cold when I have to wear anything heavier than a T-shirt and shorts or when I have to cover the sago palm in my front yard with a plastic sheet on a chilly Florida evening.

But I told God a long time ago I would go wherever He sends me, and a few years back I ended up in the central Canadian city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It was minus forty degrees Fahrenheit on my first night there. Snow was piled everywhere, and the Saskatchewan River was frozen solid. Yet my hosts told me this was a mild winter. Locals who warm their engines for ten minutes before driving anywhere joke that Saskatchewan has four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.

I had been invited there to preach, and we had planned a renewal service for Friday night. I wondered if anyone would be brave enough to venture out in that freezing weather. (I would have hibernated under three blankets until late March if I could have!) But people came—not only from Saskatoon but also from farther away—to receive a word from God. One pastor and his family drove from a town three hours north to hear my sermon!

As I was preparing during the afternoon for the meeting that night, I felt the Lord telling me a desperate pastor would be coming to the service. I prayed in the Holy Spirit, not knowing how I could help the person or what he or she was battling. All I knew was that God cared very much about the situation.

The people who came to the meeting that night were so excited about Jesus that I soon forgot about the frigid temperatures outside. After I preached, I began to share words of prophetic encouragement with different individuals in the congregation. Then, at the right time, I mentioned what God had told me earlier: There is a pastor here tonight who really needs a touch from God.

Standing near the front of the church was a pastor named Tyler. His wife, Debra, stood next to him. When they raised their hands in response to what I’d said, I called them forward and asked the host pastors, Brent and Barb, to lay their hands on them. We held Tyler’s arms in the air, and I began to prophesy about the new strength and joy God was releasing into his situation. The devil had been warring against this couple, trying to discourage them. But that night the Lord aimed His spotlight at them and reminded them of His unbreakable promises. What struck me about that night was this couple’s fierce determination to lay hold of God. Would I have driven three hours in forty-below-zero weather? They didn’t think anything of it. In fact, after the meeting we shared a late meal and then they drove home on icy roads. They praised God the whole way because the Holy Spirit had met them in the service that night.

I’ve seen this kind of tenacious faith in other parts of the world. When I was in Uganda in 2012, some women walked eight miles on dirt roads in sweltering heat to attend a revival service. And they returned for three more days of meetings—walking the long distance each time. When I visited Peru once, some indigenous people from a remote village walked eight or more hours to attend a weeknight service. And a pastor I know in Malawi rode on a bus for four straight days to attend a week of ministry training in Kenya. When I met him, he told me he made the long journey to ask if I would consider coming to his city in Malawi one day. (Three years later I did, and that man is a dear friend today.)

Whenever I witness this level of spiritual hunger, I feel ashamed of my addiction to American comforts. I admit I’m spoiled. I’m so used to my two-car garage, air conditioning, flat-screen television, and other suburban amenities that I can easily become ungrateful. My lack of thankfulness can cause me to forget how much I need God every moment.

God honors spiritual hunger because it is a sign of humility. He does not reveal Himself to casual inquirers; He looks for fervent pursuers—people who are willing to go the extra mile to find Him. God tells us: You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart (Jer. 29:13).

Just as God met my friend Tyler in the heart of Saskatchewan in the dead of winter and reheated his faith, He will do the same for you if you will take a fervent step. Don’t be smug or satisfied. Don’t develop the attitude of the first-century Laodiceans, whom God warned: You say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked (Rev. 3:17). You must see your need for a spiritual revival. You must ask God to make you desperate!

The Holy Spirit desires to kindle a blazing passion in your heart. If you will determine to seek the Lord no matter how cold the spiritual environment is around you, He will set your heart ablaze. When British revivalist John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, first put his faith in Christ, he wrote of the experience: I felt my heart strangely warmed.² After that experience, it was said that Wesley seemed almost out of breath as he pursued the salvation of the souls around him. He actually rode as many as twenty thousand miles a year on horseback to preach the gospel because of that warmth, which came from the Holy Spirit. The fire God ignites inside you can spread to many other people. God wants to use you to share His love, but you must allow Him to work inside you. I believe He can use this book to light the match that will start a raging fire.

TURNING UP THE HEAT

I lived in central Florida for more than twenty-four years. It is a land of flip-flops, swimsuits, and water parks that stay open 365 days a year. The average temperature in Orlando in January is seventy-one. In the summer a humid ninety-five degrees is fine with me.

But I have friends in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Rochester, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who endured the record-breaking polar vortex of 2014. Cold temperatures such as it produced had not been seen in more than two decades. It was minus forty degrees in Minnesota in early January. The mercury hit minus thirteen in Milwaukee. It was so cold in Chicago (minus sixteen) that the polar bear at the Lincoln Park Zoo was moved indoors!

When this deep freeze hit, I was reading the Book of Romans, and verse eleven of chapter twelve jumped off the page. The apostle Paul told his followers that in order to please God they needed to be fervent in spirit. The Greek word for fervent (zeó) means to boil with heat. The message is clear. As Christians we have a responsibility to stay hot for God no matter how cold our spiritual environment is.

But how do you stay on fire for the Lord? How can you raise your spiritual temperature at a time when many people’s faith today has gone from lukewarm to freezing? Do you want God to set your heart on fire? Would you like to have a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit?

It is possible to have that kind of spiritual revival. But it doesn’t just happen. There are some steps you must take to warm your heart, prepare it for a holy visitation, and increase your spiritual hunger.

Get back in the Word.

Spiritual zeal is kindled in your heart when you hear God speak through the pages of the Bible. I’m not talking about casually reading daily devotionals with your eyes halfway open or halfheartedly skimming Bible verses on your phone. When you desperately dig into the Scriptures to find truth, you will say, as did the disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus: Were not our hearts burning within us while He was. . . explaining the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24:32).

The Word will set your heart ablaze. In fact, you cannot expect a life-changing encounter with God unless you open your Bible and seek Him in its pages. God invested a lot time and energy to give us His Word, and many people gave their lives so that you could have a copy of the Bible today. God has watched over His Word for centuries to preserve its message. It is His love letter to you. Please do not ignore it!

Stoke the furnace of private prayer.

Fires don’t last long if you don’t regularly pile wood on the flames. You should guard your quiet time with God as if your life depended on it. You cannot survive spiritually without regular communion with the Lord. Oswald Chambers put it bluntly: Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.³

Maybe you have been away from God for some time. Maybe you have been in a spiritual desert because of failure or pain. Maybe you have not had personal communion with God for a while. Wherever you are in your walk with God, you can begin afresh right now by approaching Him and starting over. Just make an appointment with Him and keep it.

Praise God with abandon.

Sometimes the chill of discouragement, fear, and anxiety can form icicles in our souls. The only way to melt the ice is to rejoice in the Lord. Are you going through an extended period of heaviness or disappointment? Psalm 47:1 says: O clap your hands, all peoples; shout to God with the voice of joy.

When you praise God with exuberance, new strength will arise. Make a decision that this year you will praise God in a more vocal, uninhibited way than ever before. Read through the Book of Psalms and note how often this ancient hymnbook commands us to praise God with all our hearts. If you need help praising God, play a recording by one of your favorite Christian artists and sing along.

Break free from bad habits.

Paul told the Thessalonians, Do not quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). Are you doing anything that is extinguishing the Holy Spirit’s flames in your life? Many Christians remain perpetually immature, unable to grow spiritually because they won’t let go of lustful habits or addictions. If you choose to live in bondage by allowing habitual sin to take residence in your soul, then your heart will never be hot for God. Make a decision to repent and turn 180 degrees away from whatever is dampening your spiritual passion. You do not have to remain a slave to an unhealthy habit.

Get rid of your resentments.

Jesus said in the last days most people’s love will grow cold (Matt. 24:12). Don’t be a part of that cooling trend. Nothing puts out the flame of God’s love faster than bitterness. Don’t allow unforgiveness to freeze your soul. Guard your heart and deal with offenses quickly. You cannot know or enjoy God’s forgiveness if you haven’t forgiven the people who hurt you.

Get into close fellowship with other Christians.

Fires go out when the embers are far apart. But when you pull the coals close together, the flames return. This is why we should never live the Christian life in seclusion. God called us to be in community with one another (John 17:20–21; Acts 2:42). Many Christians today have developed the mistaken notion that church is optional, so they have no serious Christian friends, no mentors, no pastors, and no supportive relationships. They have created a do-it-yourself version of Christianity that is not biblical.

You will never grow hot for God apart from other believers. God has called us to encourage one another, pray for one another, and bear one another’s burdens. If you are not in a Bible-believing church, find one. If you were hurt by a previous church and don’t trust Christians, be willing to take a risk and open your heart again to God’s people.

God has a church for you. But make sure you are in a church that is on fire for God—because a dead church could put out what is left of your flame! If your church compromises God’s Word or ignores the Great Commission, you should find a new church home.

Start using your spiritual gifts.

Real spiritual passion is ignited when you serve others. Every Christian has a spiritual gift—and you are no exception. You must face your fears and stretch your faith as you begin to step out, but soon you will find there is no greater joy than being an instrument of the Holy Spirit to bless people. And when the oil of His anointing flows through you, your spiritual temperature will go up.

Find a mentor.

I love to hang around zealous, passionate Christians because their heat directly affects mine. I sometimes ask these firebrands to lay hands on me and pray. Sometimes I make appointments with them so I can glean from their wisdom and experience. You can be sure that when Elisha saw Elijah go to heaven in a fiery chariot, he was affected by the heat. Get as close as possible to those who are burning for God and you will be ignited.

Share your faith.

There is nothing more exciting than leading a person to faith in Christ. Yet according to one poll 95 percent of Christians have never led one soul to salvation.⁴ I guarantee that if you step out of your timidity and share the gospel with a neighbor, a coworker, a server at a restaurant, or a stranger on the subway, your spiritual temperature will instantly rise thirty degrees—and you will want to share with someone else.

Jesus told us not to hide our faith. He said in Matthew 5:14–15:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

I encourage you to take your flame out from under the basket and let it blaze before men. This cold, dark world needs the light of Christ. And that light comes from fervent Christians who have reached the boiling point of spiritual passion.

THE NECESSITY OF SURRENDER

God has so much more for you. The apostle Paul told the Ephesians that God desired them to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The fact that we need to stay filled means it is possible for a Christian to run on empty or only to scratch the surface of what God offers us. He does not want us to simply splash in the water or wade in the shallow end of His river. He wants to take us to the deepest depths. Ephesians 5:18 says: "Be filled with the Spirit" (emphasis added).

Some Christians are content to attend church one day a week for an hour and have a quick, fifteen-minute devotion a few days a week. Their concept of God is one-dimensional, and they really are not interested in spending too much time seeking more of Him. If that is where you are today, then you might as well put this book down now because it will not appeal to you! But if you have said in your heart, I know God has more for me. I want more of Him! then you are well on your way to experiencing the Spirit-filled life.

This book is intended to help you stoke the fires of personal revival so you not only will know God in a deeper way but also will make Him known to others. God is eager to give you more of His presence and power if you will ask Him for more. But as you ask, you must also surrender every part of your life to Him.

People often ask me what the secret is to living the Spirit-filled life. I always respond with the same answer: God cannot fill you with His Spirit if you are full of yourself. If you want more of God, you must let go of some things, quit some things, repent of some things, and change many things. But I can promise you that if you adopt a posture of surrender, then you will be amazed by the way the Holy Spirit changes you! This is the real secret of the Christian life—it is not about changing yourself or working harder to please God. It is about yielding your life to God and allowing His Spirit to live inside you.

Today it has become more acceptable for Christians to raise their hands during worship services. We do this because the Bible instructs us to lift our hands to God when we sing or pray.

But have you ever wondered why we are instructed to raise our hands in worship? The church I grew up in as a child did not practice this. We kept our hands rigidly at our sides when we sang hymns. I never saw one person getting even slightly emotional or exuberant when he sang. So you can imagine my shock when I attended a Christian conference at age eighteen and saw more than a thousand people in a hotel ballroom singing with their hands lifted. It was a strange sight to me—it looked as if a bank robbery were under way!

But I soon learned that raising hands is biblical. The psalmist wrote: Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to You for help, when I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary (Ps. 28:2), and Lift up your hands to the sanctuary and bless the LORD (Ps. 134:2). The apostle Paul instructed early Christians to take this same posture in prayer when he told Timothy: Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension (1 Tim. 2:8).

Eventually I learned to lift my hands while worshipping God in church, and I also began to practice this in my personal prayer times. I started to realize that our posture in worship is supposed to be an outward sign of an inward attitude. God asks us to lift our hands to Him because it prods us toward full surrender.

When I raise my hands to Him, I am saying, essentially: Lord, I belong to You. My life is Yours. I don’t want to run my life on my own—I want You to direct me. I don’t want to control my relationships, my money, my career path, or my future—I want to follow Your will and purpose. I am Yours, Lord.

Can you say those words today? Does your life fully belong to God? This concept of personal surrender is what we call consecration. And that is a word most modern Christians rarely hear sermons about.

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines consecration this way: "The act or ceremony of separating from a common to a sacred use, or of devoting and dedicating a person or thing to the service and worship of God, by certain rites or solemnities. Consecration does not make a