The Fellowship of the Burning Heart

The Lionheart: Resists the devil and responds to temptation with fire and fury (growls to protect the soul for the glory of Jesus Christ)

The Lambheart: Resists not evil, and responds to the fire and fury of the human persecutors with rivers of living water (rejoices in the opportunity to yield up the body for the glory of Jesus Christ)

God is a Holy Fire: “Our God shall come, and shall not keep silent; a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous all around Him (Ps. 50:3)… A fire goes before Him, and burns up His enemies round about (Ps. 97:3)… For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire (Is. 66:15)… For our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29).

Pentecost = 50^th day from Passover: The ripening of wheat, the time for threshing and burning chaff. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matt. 3:11-12). Acts 2 describes the outpour of the Holy Spirit, who came as a rushing wind and tongues of fire; the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, baptized with fire and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Fire refines, it purifies, it burns up the chaff - which is not needed. Wheat, in order to being about much fruit, must fall into the ground and die. To make bread, it must be threshed and its chaff broken away. The church of Jesus Christ is in desperate need of an outpour of the Holy Spirit and fire. We need to be purified, for all that is not of Jesus to be burned away so that we can be made pure and holy; so that we can be made worthy to be a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. So that we can have the power through the Spirit of God to carry out the impossible life, which is only made possible through the Spirit living in and through us.

The Lionheart: It’s the floor of Wind and Fire, where the wheat is purified and perfected and chaff is removed and burned up. That which is impure and imperfect is not allowed to remain. Sin no longer lives here.

The Lambheart: It’s the fountain broken open within the innermost chamber of intimacy. It’s a love bursting forth, a joy uncontained, a bubbling up of Living Water that must go out and pour fourth. It’s the Life of Jesus within, joyfully gushing forth.

Defining attributes of lionhearted lambs:

1.     They are those who are armed with the same mind as Christ was armed – prepared to suffer in the Body (1 Peter 4:1)

2.     They are those who do not consider it strange to encounter fiery trials (1 Peter 4:12)

3.     They are those who rejoice for the privilege of sharing in Christ’s sufferings (1 Peter 4:13)

4.     They are those who are unashamed of the fact that they suffer for righteousness (1 Peter 4:16)

5.     They are those who consider it the highest privilege to fill up in their bodies what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body (Col. 1:24)

6.     They are those who are immovable and undaunted in affliction, for they know that they are commissioned, even appointed, to suffering, affliction, and tribulation (1 Thess. 3:2-4, 12)

7.     They are those who are troubled on every side, yet do not get distressed; those who are perplexed, but do not despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed (2 Cor. 4:8-9)

8.     They are those that are always bearing about in their body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in their body (2 Cor. 4:10)

9.     They are those that yearn to share in the fellowship of His sufferings, and desire to be conformed to His death (Phil. 3:10)

10. They are those who are not ashamed of the testimony of Jesus Christ, but are partakers of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God (2 Tim. 1:8)

11. They are those that know that all things (whether it be tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, of any other affliction) work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose (Ro. 8:28)

12. They are those that accept with joy the fact that for Christ’s sake they are killed all the day long; accounted as sheep for the slaughter (Ro. 8:35-36)

13. They are those that know that all afflictions and all trials shall turn to their salvation through prayer and through the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19)

14. They are those that are utterly confident that they shall not be ashamed for the confidence they have placed in Jesus Christ, and whether it’s by life or by death, Christ shall be magnified in their body (Phil. 1:20)

15. They are those that know that to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Phil. 1:21)

16. They are those that are gladly spent for the glory of God, and faint not through the difficult trials, imprisonments, and the many afflictions (2 Cor. 4:15-16)

17.  They are those that are confident that as suffering and afflictions tear down the decompose their outward body, their inward man is renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16)

18.  They are those that know that their current afflictions, work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17)

19. They are those that know that if their earthly house (their body) were dissolved, that they have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Cor. 5:1)

20.  They are those that will gladly spend their bodies and spill their blood because of love for Jesus Christ and His Body, the church (2 Cor. 12:15)

21.  They are those that rejoice and are exceeding glad when they are reviled, persecuted, and all manner of evil is spoken against them falsely for the sake of Jesus Christ (Matt. 5:11-12)

22. They are those they rejoice that they are counted worthy to suffer shame for His name (Acts 5:41)

23. They are those that are exceeding joyful in all their tribulation (2 Cor. 7:4)

24. They are those that consider it pure joy when they face trials of many kinds (James 1:7)

25. They are those that know that where the sufferings of Christ abound, so the consolation, comfort, and satisfaction of Christ abounds (2 Cor. 1:5)

26.  They are those whose hope is steadfast and whose endurance is strong though they be pressed out of measure, about their human strength to handle, in so much that they despair even of life (2 Cor. 1:6-8)

27.  They are those who boast is in their Christ, His sufferings, and the fact that they are privileged to share in the fellowship of those sufferings – in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisions more frequent, in deaths often. With scourging, stoning, stripes, beatings, shipwrecks, perils, weariness, painfulness, watchings, hunger, thirst, fastings, cold and nakedness (2 Cor. 11:23-27)

28.  They are those that endure all things for Jesus Christ and for the sake of the elect (2 Tim. 2:9-10)

29.  They are those that do not consider the sufferings of this present time as worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in them (Ro. 8:18)

30.  They are those that know if was fitting for Jesus to become perfect through suffering, and it is also fitting for them to be perfected in the same manner (Heb. 2:10)

5 Keys to Lambhearted Suffering:

1.     Embrace weakness

2.     Enduring every hardship with faith

3.     Loving those who persecute

4.     Suffering with joy

5.     Persevering with hope

“Oh, if we could be wise enough to choose, even were as wise as the Lord Himself, we would choose the troubles which He has appointed to us, and we would not spare ourselves a single pang.” – Charles Spurgeon

(content from message of www.ellerslie.com)