Bush Fire Catalyst

While walking in the bush in New South Wales my cousin introduced me to a strange plant: the Grass Tree. From its grassy base protrudes a long flowering spike, once used as spear shafts by the Eora (Aboriginal people living along the south east coastline). It is a very slow-growing plant and begins to flower and seed when - unlikely as it seems - the bush fire rages!

Other plants and fauna in the bush are also dependent on that seeming enemy, the bush fire, to flourish, to reproduce and so maintain their hold in that harsh environment. 

The fire of God’s Holy Spirit purges the church; it burns up; sin is destroyed; unhelpful influences are cleared away.  But it also causes new ministries to flower and seed, bringing fresh growth to God’s church.

We need the fire, painful though it is. Fresh anointing and new ways of seeing and doing things are going to emerge; unlikely people with unlikely gifts will come to the fore.  We won’t always be able to depend on past ways of doing things anymore. We’ve got to find God afresh; we’ve got to find His thinking, His ways for a new era. It’s got to be good. We need it.