Heart Tracks - Ring Of Fire

       A friend recently shared a story he knew about a American Indian preacher.  The man was telling others about Jesus while seated at a campfire.  He took a number of twigs from the fire and arranged them in a circle, adding an already burning one to it.  Soon the circle of twigs was burning.  Into the center of the circle he placed a worm.  All watched as the worm sought escape, moving in one direction, and then another, trying to find a way out. Trying to find salvation, deliverance.  Finally, unable to do either, it retreated into the center of the circle, and curled into ball, it's striving to save itself ended.  At that moment, the preacher reached down, took hold of the worm, and lifted it out of the certain death that awaited it.  It had been saved.  This, he told his listeners was exactly how the Father saves.  It is when we come to the place of finally realizing that all of our self-effort, all of our striving to better ourselves, improve ourselves, save ourselves, cannot, will not work, and we surrender.  It's at that point that the loving hand of the Father is able to reach down, and lift us from the circle of fire that will surely bring death for all those without Christ.  

    Jesus said that "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and no one may come unto the Father except through Me."  Those who would call themselves His would agree, strongly, that this is true.  We are born into a "ring of fire," through the sin which entered the human race through Adam.  No amount of striving, self effort, religious activity and good works will enable us to escape it, and we will not escape it till we, like the worm, admit our inability to get out and surrender to the hand and heart that will, with unending love, lift us out.  The question that must first be asked is, has He lifted you out of that ring, or are you still seeking to bring about your own salvation, your own deliverance?  You cannot escape the ring, but He can lift you out....if you'll call on Him.  Have you?
    There's another question to be asked, and this would be to those of us who would testify that He has lifted us out.  Do we, as we walk through a fallen world, a world that will often encircle us with rings of burning, impossible circumstances and difficulties, still seek to find a way out, or through them by our own strength and ability?  Having admitted and yielded to His saving grace and power, do we now live in our own strength and power?  When confronted with the "rings of fire" of emotional wounds and scars, of crippling circumstances both physically and circumstantially, and even of spiritual attacks set against us, do we seek, like the worm, to find a way out by our own means? More, when it comes to the lives and situations of friends and loved ones who are trapped in those rings, do we seek to be their deliverer?  To be the ones who "save" them?  Paul, when addressing the Galatian church, called them foolish, for though they had been saved by grace and grace alone, they were now trying to live by the strength of their own ability, rather than by the power of His grace.  How like them are you and I?  How foolish do we continue to be?  How much longer will we continue to try and find the way out of the particular ring of fire confronting us in our lives right now.  How much longer will we go on trying to make things "better" instead of allowing Him to make all things new?

    We're born into a ring of fire, and though, through faith in Christ, the Father will lift us out of it, the fire will not cease to try and surround us through the pain, heartache, and impossibilities of life.  Our choice will be whether we will trust Him to every time, lift of us out of them, walk through them with Him, or, like the worm, exhaust ourselves trying to make our own way out?  If He's allowed a fire, may we trust Him deliver us, knowing that nothing will be burnt except that which hinders us, holds us back, from the fullness of life that He saved us for in the first place.
The rings of fire will come.  Will we trust Him there?

Blessings,
Pastor O