Jentezen Franklin - Turn Up The Fire - Part 1
1 Kings 18, «Then Elijah said to all the people, 'Come near to me.' So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the sons of Jacob, whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, 'Israel shall be your name.' Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord; he made a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. And he put the wood in order…»
Notice that, «He put wood in order and then he cut the bull in pieces, laid it the wood, poured waterpots full of water on the burnt sacrifice on the wood. Then he said, 'Do it a second time.' And then he said, 'Do it a third time, ' and they did it. And so, the water ran all over the altar and filled the trench. And then Elijah, at the time of the evening sacrifice, came near and said, 'Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel, and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word».
Verse 38, «Then the fire of the Lord fell,» then the fire of the Lord fell, «And consumed the burnt sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust». Fire was proof that the sacrifice had been received. «And it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it,» when the fire fell, they didn’t just sit there and watch it, but, «They fell on their faces; and they said, 'The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God! '» Verse 41, «Then Elijah said to Ahab, 'Go up, and eat and drink; for there is the sound of an abundance of rain.'»
I wanna preach to you for just a few moments about this fire, and I want God to speak to us all and rekindle and turn up that fire in our hearts and in this church. Jack London, the famous short story writer, wrote a little book, it’s about a hundred pages or so long called, «To Build a Fire». And two of the things that he points out in that story is that fire is essential. Fire is something that a person cannot make it long. And his books were about another time in generation when men were explorers, and men would push the limits, and it’s about a hiker in Canada who goes into the Yukon wilderness, and the snow, and the dangers that are there.
And how essential fire was. It was only him and his dog. Before he went out into the extreme wilderness, he stopped and he encountered an old man who was a veteran of living in the wilderness by himself, a legend, really. And he began to speak to this young kid who was about to go where not many people could survive. And he warned him against this extreme cold. He warned him that it could get extremely cold, and when it’s 50 below or more, you should never be in the wilderness by yourself when it’s extremely cold.
But the hiker was competent, and he was used to outdoor wilderness experiences, and he didn’t really pay it a lot of attention, how cold it was. He was doing good until he was crossing a river that was frozen over, and the ice broke, and he went under, and instantly he knew he was in trouble. He miraculously got out of the water and got under a spruce tree. And he knew that it was critical and essential for life to get a fire going. He took his moccasin shoes off and all of the clothing, and he tried his best to build a fire. And he was doing a good job, but his hands began to freeze. He noticed that he, in a matter of minutes, had no control over his hands.
And it talks about how that even with his teeth, he was so desperate to get a fire going that he put the matches in his teeth and tried to… and then put the moss and the sticks in his hand because his hand couldn’t feel anything anyhow. And so, he didn’t care if it burned him, he just was desperate to save his life. And somehow, he lit it with the match and the teeth, and it was enough to get the moss and the little twigs in his hand, and he set it down and fed the fire, push some little twigs in.
And it was going good, and he was feeling the heat as it was growing. And he reached up and made a mistake. And if you’re reading this, this is a bad Sunday that you shouldn’t have come. I’m gonna be a spoiler today. And he reaches up and he takes the twigs just to feed the fire 'cause it’s going good. And when he does, he didn’t notice that that spruce tree was, the limbs were heavy, heavy with snow. And it started a avalanche basically on that tree, from the top all the way down somehow, one limb released its snow, and it hit another and another and the vibrations start going through the tree, and they landed right on that fire. And that fire went out, and the man died by a dead fire. Fire that was once there, fire was so essential that there was no chance to live.
I wanna say something from the bottom of my heart to you. It’s impossible to live for Jesus Christ without the fire of God in your life. It becomes a drudgery, it becomes a religion, it becomes something that’s not real, it becomes something that you are sincere, but it’s empty. You’re saved, you’re on your way to Heaven. Thanks be unto God for that. But the fire is essential. John the Baptist said, I indeed baptize you in water, but He that is coming after me shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire. He wouldn’t have said fire if he didn’t mean it. Fire is a symbol of God. The Bible said in Hebrews 12, our God is a consuming fire. He led them in the wilderness with a cloud of fire because without the fire, you don’t have the leading for the next step and the next season to cross over into the new things that God may have for you. It’s essential.
Fire is essential to the leading of God. Fire was in the temple. It was critical that the fire on the altar never go out. And so, what I’m preaching to you today is that, I’m trying to say that we must have a burning fire in this church and in our own personal lives. In 2025, we must have the fire of the Holy Spirit. I don’t want this church to dry up and die. I don’t care how many people we have, I don’t care how many buildings we have. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I’ve come to far to dry up now and become a tumbleweed spiritually speaking. I want the fire of God to burn in this place. The fire of the Holy Ghost. Jeremiah had the fire shut up in his bones. He had it in his bones. That’s a Pentecostal preacher with a fever, amen.
He said, «It’s like a fire shut up in my bones». Isaiah had burning lips. The angel took a coal from off the altars of Heaven and touched his lips and set his words on fire, and he said, «Here am I. Send me». And God sent him to change the world. And even in Acts 2, the Bible talks about how that when they went into the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost, that there were tongues of fire that were flaming on top of every one of the 120 in the Upper Room, symbolic of the presence of God, who is a consuming fire. God knows that we need the fire of the Holy Ghost.
I want it in my bones, I want it on my preaching, I want it on our singing, I want it in my soul, I want it on my head cleansing and purifying my thoughts. I want the fire of the Holy Ghost in this church. A passion for God is another way of saying the fire of God. The fire of the Holy Ghost needs to be in this pulpit. The fire of the Holy Ghost needs to be on our singing. The fire needs to be on our musicians. The fire needs to be on our greeters. The fire needs to be in our hand clapping 'cause when it is, it won’t be a golf clap. It will be, «Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah».
The fire needs to be in our shouts. The fire needs to be in our worship. The fire needs to be in our praise. It used to be people came to Pentecostal church to see what was gon' happen. They didn’t know what people were gon' do. Now, if they come, they fall asleep, they’re looking on their phones and young people thumbing through. You let the fire of God hit a church, and it’s something. It keeps your eye… you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Fire is essential, it’s intense, it’s hot.
Fire can burn out sin, fire can burn out apathy. Jesus said, «If you’re lukewarm, I’ll spew you out of my mouth». He warned that the end time church, the number one characteristic would be they would drift from being on fire to lukewarmness. It’s not that they don’t love God, it’s not that they don’t have some of the fire. You can’t have lukewarm and not have some of the fire. You love Jesus, but you’re not on fire, and there’s a big difference. And Lord, I want us to understand that the process of building a fire is given to us by the prophet Elijah.
God’s interested in the fire. God was the one who wanted the fire on Mount Carmel in the text that I read. God said, «Elijah, climb Mount Carmel and build me an altar so that the fire can fall on the nation, and on my people, and on the church». He wants the fire to burn. He wants in his church to be that passionate fire of God. So, Elijah gives us fire building 101. He gives us two or three steps. He said, «Number one, rebuild the altar. Take 12 stones,» did you catch it? «Take 12 stones and make that the foundation».
And the foundation has to be laid for the fire of God to fall on a person, a family, or a church and a ministry, a nation. You have to go back and rebuild the 12 stones or the foundation. Foundational stone’s a part of the fire falling. The right foundation matters. The thing that sustains and will make the fire burn through this year is when you have the right foundation. There is Jesus. We believe that one of those stones in the main cornerstone of the whole foundation of our faith is Jesus Christ. There is no other way to Heaven. There is no other way. There’s only two fires, the fire of hell and the fire of the Holy Ghost.
And one of 'em’s gon' catch you. One of 'em’s gonna burn you. One of 'em’s gonna get you. Oh, we need to remember one of those stones is eternal judgment. One of those stones, if you don’t repent, you will perish and go to hell. And we need the stone of repentance, and we need the stone of Jesus. What is Jesus? He said, «I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No man gets to the father but my me». You can’t get to the Father, you can’t get to God, the creator, Elohim. You can’t go through any religion, every religion. You can’t go through stones, talking to rocks, and putting them in your house. You can’t go. You can’t go through any other religion. I don’t care who their leader is. There is only one. He is Jesus, He is Lord. I’m not doing this to rally support. It’s the truth.
We’ve come to a time when people think any old way can get you to Heaven, but that’s a lie. That’s a doctrine of the demon. There’s only one. There’s no compromise on Jesus. He was born of a virgin, He lived a sinless life, He died on a cross, He rose three days later. He said, «I give you eternal life,» and He said, «One day I’m coming back with a shout and the sound of the trumpet, and I’m gonna raise the dead up, and the living up, and we’re gonna go up and live eternally in a place called Heaven, and I’m gon' make Heaven and earth all new,» hallelujah.
That’s the altar, that’s the foundation you can build your life on. I believe that holiness is one of those stones. I believe that prayer is one of those stones. I believe the word of God is one of those stones. And we have to rebuild those stones and that altar in our life. And then, He said secondly, «I want you, after you put the 12 stones down,» He said, «I want you to put the wood in order. Don’t just throw it over there and pile it up». But He said, «I want it in order. I want you to get the wood, lay it out so that it can breathe oxygen when the fire starts. Do it and stack it in a way that the fire will be receiving oxygen, which is what fire has to have to really flame, and get intense and get hot».
And then, He said, «Put a bullock on the fire. Once you get the wood in its place and once you get the foundation under it,» He said, «Take the sacrifice and put it on the wood and on the stones because it’s so important that you understand that we never get away from sacrifice». If you want the fire to fall, it requires having sacrifice on the altar of God. Never get too big for sacrifice. Never get too important that you feel you don’t have to sacrifice. «God, I give you everything,» and that’s what the fire is drawn to. Elijah, after he built the altar, he began to pray. He didn’t pray a little prayer to check the prayer box, but he said, «I wanna pray until the fire falls».
Elijah prayed a persistent, fervent prayer. A seething prayer. A heartfelt, red hot prayer. James said, «It’s the fervent, effectual, passionate prayer of the righteous man or woman avails much». It’s not a little thing. But when you begin to press beyond and you hit that place where, «Oh, God is here,» and I can speak, and I feel something shifting. I feel the fire of God receiving the prayer. It’s an intensity. When you ask, when you knock, when you seek, do it with intensity, expectancy. A prayer that says, «Thy kingdom come, thy will be done».
Make Atlanta look like Heaven. Make Gainesville look like Heaven. Make Gwinnett look like Heaven. Make Orange County look like Heaven. Make Spartanburg look like Heaven. Make my family and my house look like Heaven. Thy kingdom come, pray it with fervency. Pray it with fire. Oh God, let your kingdom come to my children and my children’s children.
You know, this is interesting. If you get a fire hot enough, when I think about a hot fire, I think about what tragically happened in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. That fire was an out of control fire. And spiritually, that’s the kind of fire we need. We need an out of control fire because that fire didn’t care how ritzy the neighborhood was. That fire didn’t care what movie star lived there or what PhD lived there, or what multimillionaire live there. That fire just said, «I don’t care what you’ve got or who you are, I’m coming your way». I want that kind of fire to hit. It doesn’t just hit the down and out, but the up and in. And whoever it is, they need the fire. It start spreading and hitting in places that you never dreamed it would hit. The Bible put it like this, «When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord will raise up a standard against Him».
And there is a fire that no matter how much the enemy comes at you, this fire cannot be put out by the devil’s fire hydrant because it will burn up all of his weapons that he formed. They shall not prosper. You get the fire hot enough, you get the fire burning enough, even underwater, fire can burn. Did you know that’s how they build the bridges across the water? They have to have those scuba divers that go under sometimes and they have welding materials, and they have one tube that has oxygen, and the other has fire, and magnesium is one of the environments that can burn unto fire, and it’s just the most amazing thing. You get fire hot enough, it can even burn underwater.
So, if the enemy comes in like a flood, it’s not that he doesn’t devastate and take out everything. Sometimes, he hits you so hard, but you can still be underwater and have a fire. You can still be going through the water and through the flood and still have a fire producing that oxygen, that wind of the Holy Spirit. You see, we do a few things that we must do to keep the fire burning. You see, when you provide the fuel, the fire will keep burning. And God wants us to have fire even when we’re under attack from the flood. There are burnt over fields that people say a burnt over field is a place where there used to be fire, but there’s no fire anymore.
Let me tell you that you can get a fire hot enough, and they did it in California, that there is no burned over field that the fire won’t come back to. And if you will get the fire burning, maybe you’ve been through something, maybe you’ve been through a fiery furnace, and it’s left you so burned, and so broken, and so devastated that you’re like a burned over field. And in your mind, it’ll never be the same again. But the fire of the Holy Ghost, and this is what I really wanted to get to preach. The Lord is ready.
There’s a bunch of burned over fields I’m preaching to. You used to have the fire, you used to pray in the spirit, you used to have joy, you used to have faith, you used to believe in God and passionate about everything, but you’ve just been burned over so much that there’s nothing but that dryness there. Well, I want to tell you that God says it’s time again for the cities that burned over fields to have the fire hit 'em again, and it’s time for the homes and the believers who are burned over fields to have the fire come back again. I’m believing God. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy. I just believe He’ll baptize His church in the Holy Ghost and fire. And when the fire comes, it can spread. It can’t be contained. It’s an out of control fire.