“Fire goes out from His presence to consume His enemies on every side.” – Psalm 97:3, ISV

When I was a boy, I would scare the hell out of people by filling my mouth with paraffin then dramatically ‘spitting fire’ at night.

Everyone would run for dear life. There’s no living creature that doesn’t fear fire.

In the Bible, fire carries deep symbolic significance and is used to represent various divine attributes and a range of divine actions—from the warmth of God’s presence to the intensity of His judgment and the transformative power of His Spirit.

In our meditation today, the poet says fire goes out from the LORD’s presence to consume His enemies on every side.

Biblically, fire symbolizes the tangible manifestation of God’s presence and power.

In Exodus for instance, the Lord led the Children of Israel through the desert with a “pillar of fire” by night, which was the tangible sign of God’s guiding and protective presence for His people.

Deuteronomy 9:3 adds; “But understand that today the LORD your God goes across ahead of you as a consuming fire; He will destroy them and subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them swiftly, as the LORD has promised.”

When God was with Moses on Mt Sinai, the Bible says; “And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop in the eyes of the Israelites” (Exodus 24:17).

Whenever you are in God’s presence, you emerge with fire in your mouth!

Indeed, fire is attributed to God’s character in Deuteronomy 4:24, which says; “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” See also Hebrews 12:29.

Malachi 3:3 says; “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.”

Being described as a refiner’s fire implies that He purifies and refines His Church and His saints like a goldsmith uses the smelting process in a fiery furnace to heat gold ore so as to extract pure gold.

Of course, the hotter the furnace, the purer the gold and the greater the value.

Whenever you go into God’s presence, you emerge with fire in your mouth!

This imagery represents the mandatory process of spiritual purification and the transformation of Christian character (see 1 Peter 1:7).

In Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon each of the disciples in the form of “tongues of fire,” which signifies the empowerment of the Holy Spirit upon ordinary people to enable them do extraordinary things.

Like the Early Church was ‘on fire’ for Jesus, we also should be energized through our devotion to God and actively seek to reach the lost with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit who enables us to be fervent, bold and persistent, even in the face of opposition or persecution.

Like the angel touched the prophet Isaiah’s lips with a hot coal from the divine altar, God is raising an invincible army of preachers whose mouths and lives have been seared by the Spirit’s tongues of fire.

In Luke 12:49, our Lord Jesus said; “I have come to ignite a fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Get ready to catch, carry and spread the divine fire that it may consume the adversaries of God’s Kingdom on every side!