Let It Burn: Usher 4:12

Yesterday, I smelled smoke.

Today, apparently, I have joined the fire department.

At this point I would like to remind God that I was born and raised in Southern California, so I am already intimately familiar with fire. My brother is LAFD. I know enough about wildfires to know I do not want one anywhere near me. I know what Santa Ana winds can do. I know what that eerie orange California sky looks like. I know there are certain conditions where one spark stops being “a little fire” very quickly.

So, after yesterday’s revelation about fire, I woke up this morning still sitting with it.

Because something has been bothering me.

If I am smelling smoke because God is illuminating something, what exactly am I supposed to do with the fire?

My natural instinct is obvious.

PUT IT OUT.

This feels like a reasonable response.

Fire bad. Water good. Everybody evacuate. Grab the important documents. Somebody find the dog.

Except that is not actually how firefighters deal with every fire.

Sometimes they intentionally burn an area.

A controlled or prescribed burn can reduce vegetation and other combustible material so that when a dangerous wildfire comes through later, there is less available to feed it.

Which sounds absolutely insane until you understand the strategy.

You fight an uncontrollable fire by intentionally removing its fuel beforehand.

And suddenly my Bible study became personal again.

Because what if that is what God has been doing in me?

What if I have spent this entire season screaming, “GOD, SOMETHING IS ON FIRE,” and God is like, “Yes. I know. I lit that one.”

Well.

That changes things.

Because Scripture does not use fire to mean only one thing.

God appears to Moses through the burning bush in Exodus 3. In Exodus 13, God guides Israel through the wilderness by a pillar of fire at night. Malachi 3 uses the imagery of a refiner’s fire for purification. Jeremiah describes God’s Word as “a fire” shut up in his bones in Jeremiah 20:9. Fire is also used throughout Scripture in connection with judgment.

Then Peter writes something I frankly could have lived without reading this week:

“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” 1 Peter 4:12 NIV

Excuse me, Peter.

Because I have absolutely been acting like something strange is happening to me.

Lately, adversity has felt uniquely personal.

Not regular adversity.

Custom adversity.

Monogrammed adversity.

Adversity with my initials embroidered on the towel.

I have found myself wondering, “God, what did I do?”

Did I miss something?

Did I disobey?

Did I make the wrong decision?

Did I pray wrong?

Because sometimes doing what I believe is right has somehow felt wrong.

That is a deeply confusing place to stand.

Yet Peter says not to be surprised by the fire.

Which means adversity in response to obedience should not always create a question in me.

Sometimes it should create an answer.

Maybe I am not outside of God’s will.

Maybe I am standing exactly where obedience brought me.

That does not mean every painful thing is sent by God. It does mean I cannot use comfort as my only evidence that God is present.

Because biblically, sometimes God is in the fire.

Sometimes He guides through fire.

Sometimes He refines with fire.

Sometimes the fire tests what is real.

Sometimes something simply needs to burn.

And I am beginning to realize that my instinct has been to ask God to extinguish everything that makes me uncomfortable before asking Him what kind of fire I am looking at.

That is where the controlled burn started messing with me.

Because if firefighters know a dangerous fire may eventually move through an area, reducing the available fuel beforehand can make that future fire less destructive.

There is less left for it to consume.

And I sat there thinking:

What if God is doing that in me?

What if the Holy Spirit is burning through things now that the enemy would love to use as fuel later?

My need for approval.

My obsession with being understood.

My expectation that obedience should produce comfort.

My dependence on people responding the way I think they should.

My tendency to interpret rejection as a statement about my worth.

My belief that I need everyone to understand my heart before I can have peace.

And somewhere in the distance, Usher cleared his throat.

Because apparently this Bible study has a soundtrack.

Let it burn.

Sir, you were talking about an entirely different situation, but we appreciate your contribution to the theology.

Because maybe that is actually the invitation.

Let it burn.

Not my faith.

Not my hope.

Not my ability to love.

Burn what can be used against those things.

Because the enemy cannot threaten me with losing something I have already surrendered.

He cannot weaponize approval if God has already dealt with my addiction to it.

He cannot control me through rejection if rejection no longer gets to define me.

He cannot manipulate my fear of being misunderstood if I have accepted that obedience does not require universal agreement.

If God burns the fuel first, what exactly is the wildfire supposed to consume?

And somewhere in that thought, I realized something uncomfortable.

Maybe my biggest problem is not the fire.

Maybe it is my sight.

Which is exactly how I ended up in John 9.

John 9 opens with Jesus and His disciples encountering a man who had been blind from birth.

Immediately, the disciples want to know why.

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” John 9:2 NIV

I understand them more than I would like to admit.

Because when something hurts, I want an explanation.

Pain makes me investigative.

Who did this?

Why did this happen?

Was it because I didn’t forward that chain text message in 2006?

What did I miss?

Whose fault is this?

Was this avoidable?

God, please provide the incident report.

The disciples look at a hurting man and immediately try to trace his suffering backward.

Jesus redirects their attention.

Their simple assumption that somebody’s sin must explain his blindness was wrong.

That made me think about the way I have approached some of my own fires.

I have been so busy asking why they started that I have not always asked what God wants to reveal through them.

Then I noticed something else.

The man did not have one problem.

He was blind.

He was also a beggar.

Later, his neighbors identify him as the man who used to sit and beg in John 9:8.

So Jesus is standing in front of a man with multiple problems.

Blindness.

Poverty.

Dependence.

Social marginalization.

Probably a whole lifetime of emotional consequences attached to all of that.

Jesus heals his sight.

Just his sight.

Now wait a minute.

Because if I am the man, I have a LIST.

Lord, since You are here…

Eyes.

Finances.

Housing.

Employment.

Trauma.

Relationships.

Maybe a little DoorDash gift card for the journey.

Jesus addresses one thing.

Sight.

And I started wondering whether some problems are pregnant with other problems.

Maybe what looks like ten separate problems can sometimes grow from one root.

Because when I cannot see, I beg.

And spiritually?

Oh, I have begged.

Begged people to understand me.

Begged relationships to validate me.

Begged environments to accept me.

Begged people to reassure me.

Begged circumstances to tell me whether I was valuable.

Begged external things to settle internal questions.

Maybe God does not need to fix every branch first.

Maybe He wants to heal how I see.

Because if my sight changes, I may stop begging for some of the things I thought I needed.

And apparently Jesus decided this lesson needed to become even more offensive to me personally.

Because then He spit.

Sir. Please Put the Saliva Back in Your Mouth.

“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.” John 9:6 NIV

Absolutely not.

Jesus, I love You.

You died for me.

You rose for me.

You are Lord of my life.

Please keep Your saliva to Yourself.

Because I have questions.

Was there no bottled water?

A damp cloth?

Neosporin?

Anything from CVS?

We went directly to spit mud?

The germs alone would have had me reconsidering whether sight was necessary.

Yet, once I got past my completely reasonable sanitation concerns, I noticed the intimacy of what Jesus did.

John describes Jesus’ miracles as signs. The physical miracles are real events, yet they also reveal realities beyond the immediate physical need.

Blind eyes become a place where Jesus reveals something about sight.

Bread reveals something about spiritual hunger.

Water reveals something about spiritual thirst.

Resurrection reveals something about spiritual life.

The physical miracle gives me language for a spiritual reality.

And here Jesus takes dirt, adds something from Himself, His DNA and touches the place that cannot see.

Something from Him meets something human.

Genesis tells me humanity was formed from dust.

Now Jesus is stooping toward dirt.

Creator touching creation.

Divinity touching humanity.

And suddenly the gross part became beautiful.

Still gross.

Let us not get carried away.

Beautifully gross.

Because healing required proximity.

Jesus got close enough to touch the very place that was broken.

And that exposed another issue in me.

I want God close enough to heal me without always being close enough to touch what hurts.

I want restoration without exposure.

Healing without vulnerability.

Transformation without anybody getting near the wound.

God, fix it.

Please do not touch it.

Which is…not generally how fixing things works.

Then Jesus does something else.

He sends the man somewhere.

“Go…wash in the Pool of Siloam.” John 9:7 NIV

John tells us Siloam means “Sent.”

And the man went.

Still blind.

I keep coming back to that.

He had heard Jesus.

He had mud on his face.

He had received an instruction.

And he still could not see.

That means there was a period between the Word and the evidence where all he had was enough trust to keep walking.

I hate that part.

I would prefer God to heal me first and provide instructions second.

Lord, turn the lights on and THEN I will go.

Preferably with GPS.

Avoid highways.

No tolls.

Five-star reviews at the destination.

Yet this man walks while still blind.

Which means whoever had his ear was determining where his feet went before his eyes could confirm anything.

And there it was again.

Whoever has my ear has access to my life.

If rejection has my ear, rejection gets my feet.

If fear has my ear, fear gets my decisions.

If disappointment has my ear, disappointment gets my expectations.

If offense has my ear, offense gets my relationships.

If God has my ear, eventually my life moves toward wherever He sends me.

I cannot live a good life on bad information.

Then I noticed Jesus did not simply tell the man what to do.

He told him where to go.

Siloam.

Sent.

Which made me wonder whether some of my healing is connected not only to who I am becoming, but where I keep positioning myself.

There are places that feed things God is trying to starve.

There are relationships that reopen what God is trying to heal.

There are voices that keep me emotionally activated and then convince me that activation is discernment.

There are environments where the old version of me can survive beautifully.

Then there are places where healed me has to learn how to live.

Jesus says in Matthew 11:6, “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

And there goes my other eyebrow.

Because what happens when I am offended by the way God chooses to protect me?

What happens when protection feels like rejection?

What happens when separation feels like abandonment?

What happens when His “go” feels cruel because I wanted to stay?

What happens when God uses something I resent today to preserve something I will desperately need tomorrow?

And THAT question dragged me directly into the seasons I thought I had already survived.

There have been seasons of my life marked by loss.

Rejection.

Disappointment.

People leaving.

Relationships changing.

Expectations collapsing.

Those things hurt in their actual season.

I have always understood that.

What I am beginning to see now is that perhaps the greatest danger was never only what those experiences did to me then.

It was what they could convince me to become later.

And suddenly Inside Out made entirely too much spiritual sense.

Joy spends so much of the movie trying to keep Sadness away from the controls.

Do not touch anything.

Stand in your little circle.

Please stop turning perfectly good memories blue.

Eventually we learn that Riley needs Sadness.

Sadness itself was never the enemy.

That matters to me.

Because grief is not evil.

Anger is not automatically evil.

Fear has a function.

Sadness has a function.

Disappointment is real.

Rejection genuinely hurts.

The problem begins when a legitimate emotion gets weaponized and handed permanent control of Headquarters.

Loss says, “See? Loving people is dangerous.”

Rejection says, “See? Nobody really wants you.”

Disappointment says, “See? Hope makes you stupid.”

Fear says, “See? Distance is safer.”

Anger says, “See? You don’t need anybody.”

Now an emotion has become a worldview.

A season became an identity.

A wound became a philosophy.

And yesterday’s fire started burning through today’s relationships.

That is what hit me hardest this morning.

Maybe that season of pain was not only about that season.

Because this season requires things those seasons taught me to fear.

I need family.

I need friends.

I need community.

I need safe relationships.

I need vulnerability.

I need God.

Yet previous fires taught me how to survive without reaching.

Loss taught me not to hold too tightly.

Rejection taught me not to expect belonging.

Disappointment taught me to lower my expectations.

Pain taught me that walls feel safer than doors.

Those lessons helped me survive something.

They cannot be allowed to lead me now.

Because the enemy does not have to destroy me in the original fire if he can convince me to spend the rest of my life smelling smoke.

WHEW.

That one hurt.

Maybe the attack was never only, “Can I hurt her?”

Maybe it was, “Can I hurt her badly enough that she stops receiving what she will need later?”

Can rejection make me suspicious of acceptance?

Can abandonment make me reject community?

Can disappointment make me afraid of expectation?

Can grief make love feel too expensive?

Can betrayal make vulnerability feel irresponsible?

Can yesterday’s fire keep me from ever catching fire for God today?

There it is.

The fires around me were trying to extinguish the fire within me.

Which means the controlled burn makes even more sense now.

God is not asking me to pretend those fires did not hurt.

He is refusing to let them remain fuel.

So maybe He is burning through the conclusions I made while I was hurting.

Everybody leaves.

Burn it.

I am safer alone.

Burn it.

Hope only leads to disappointment.

Burn it.

Needing people makes me weak.

Burn it.

Rejection means something is wrong with me.

Burn it.

If I cannot control the outcome, I should not participate.

Baby…

Usher, come get your microphone.

Let it burn.

Then of course, by the end of John 9, the man who received his sight is being interrogated by the Pharisees.

Everybody suddenly has questions about his transformation.

How did this happen?

Who did it?

What do you think about Him?

Explain yourself.

The man finally says:

“One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” John 9:25 NIV

I love him.

Because essentially:

I do not have a PowerPoint.

I did not prepare a TED Talk.

Please direct additional questions to management.

All I know is I used to see one way.

Now I see differently.

And maybe that is where I am.

I don’t understand every fire.

I don’t understand every loss.

I don’t understand every rejection.

I don’t understand every relationship.

I don’t understand why God allowed certain things to burn as long as they did.

I don’t understand why some healing required mud when I personally would have preferred something antibacterial.

I don’t understand why obedience sometimes requires walking while I still cannot see.

Yet I am beginning to see something I couldn’t see before.

Maybe God is not merely putting out fires.

Maybe He is teaching me which ones deserve water and which ones need oxygen.

There are fires I need to extinguish.

There are fires I need to stop trying to prevent.

There are fires that reveal God’s presence.

There are fires that refine.

There are fires that expose.

There are fires the enemy would love to turn into lifelong fuel.

Then there is the fire of God that can consume the very thing the enemy planned to use against me.

So my prayer has changed.

God, don’t just put the fire out.

Teach me to recognize it.

If it is destroying something You called me to protect, show me how to fight it.

If it is something I created, give me the humility to take responsibility for it.

If it is adversity that came with obedience, keep me from assuming something strange has happened.

If it is refining me, keep me in the process.

If yesterday’s pain is trying to become today’s worldview, burn the lie and leave the lesson.

And if You are performing a controlled burn in me because You know a wildfire is coming later?

Fine.

Let it burn.

Burn the entitlement.

Burn the offense.

Burn the approval addiction.

Burn my need to be understood.

Burn the conclusions I made from rejection.

Burn the walls I built from disappointment.

Burn every survival strategy that has outlived the season that created it.

Just don’t let the fires I survived convince me to become someone who cannot receive love, community, friendship, family or You.

Because maybe the safest ground really is the ground that has already burned.

Maybe when the enemy returns with rejection, there will be nothing there for it to eat.

Maybe when disappointment comes looking for my hope, it will discover my hope is no longer rooted in outcomes.

Maybe when abandonment tries to threaten me, it will discover that being left no longer means I am unlovable.

Maybe when adversity tries to convince me that obedience was a mistake, it will find 1 Peter 4:12 already written across the scorched earth.

I smelled smoke yesterday.

Today I can see a little better.

And perhaps that was the miracle all along.

The fire did not come to make me blind.

It exposed where I already couldn’t see.

So yes, Usher.

With all due respect to the original context…

Let it burn.

Because this time, I know what I am trying to save.

And I finally know what I can afford to lose.