Do you remember when Jesus was passing through Samaria to Jerusalem and he sent messengers ahead to make a place for him? The Samaritans would not receive him. The disciples asked, “Do you want us to command fire from heaven and burn them up?” The scary part of that story is that they really could have done that! Jesus never indicated that that was far-fetched or impossible for them. Instead Jesus rebuked them because they had the wrong spirit. He said, “The Son of Man came to redeem man.”

On occasion you do or say a really dynamic thing, something that you know everyone should be standing in line to hear about. Instead, they just seem to miss the whole point. Or maybe you have just had the idea of the century — something that will sell like hotcakes; alas, no one is even slightly excited about your idea.

Now you come to the place where you begin to contemplate calling down fire from heaven. You may call it “giving a piece of your mind”, “reading the riot act,” or some such modern phrase. But it still translates roughly into the same action as the disciples, at least in spirit. And that, as Shakespeare says, is where the rub comes in. Your spirit is all wrong.

Okay! You can’t do that, so you just make a firm decision that you will never share again. Or you decide to be eccentric and do things “only for myself.” What you have to say is too good to waste on an unappreciative world. That is a sneaky way of calling down fire.

Instead of “calling down fire”, recognize the “fire that is shut up in your bones”; that fire which God has placed there. Let that fire of His Word burn out the dross of your unregenerate personality. Allow the rejections and the unappreciative friends and family to sharpen you, as “iron sharpens iron.” Determine that rejection and lack of appreciation will only make you a stronger, better person. Even fire can be a handy tool!

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