Beat The Chaff Out Of Me

TODAY’S READING: Matthew 1; Matthew 2; Matthew 3; Matthew 4

SCRIPTURE:  MATTHEW 3:11-12

"I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

OBSERVATION:

This separating the chaff from the wheat seems like Jesus is talking about groups of people.  Kind of like separating the sheep from the goats.  While I would like to think that I am the wheat, I know that there is chaff in my life that hinders my walk with God and diminishes His fulness in my life.  Typical human stuff, you know.  

Being that this is an illustration or a parable I don’t want to take it farther than John intended it to go, but there is a significant point that I see in this illustration.  Both the wheat and the chaff come from the same stalk.  Chaff is the part that is dry, scaly, and dead.  It is not good for nourishment.  John says that Jesus will Baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  That thru relationship with Jesus our lives would be threshed - the image of God in us will be preserved and stored while the sinful part of us is burned.

The picture is not pretty.  It sounds like an uncomfortable process.  However, it is necessary and no less comfortable than living outside of God’s design for our lives.

APPLICATION:

I will invite the Holy Spirit to evaluate my life and point out the chaff in my life.  I will spend time daily praying in the Spirit, that He may consume my life, burning the dead, the dry, unhealthy parts of my life, and preserving the parts of me that are spiritually healthy and life giving to others - those parts of me that can grow and build into the life that God originated.

I will continue to cultivate a heart of humility, obedience, and, repentance.

PRAYER:

Father, your word says that you are a “consuming fire.”  I pray that you would consume my life - my desires, my thoughts, my motives, my relationships, my activities.  God, forgive me for letting the chaff build up in my life.  Forgive me for burying your eternal plan beneath the temporal desires and values that I have set in my life.  I love you Lord and ask you to send the firs of your Holy Spirit to refine me more and more, to burn out the impurities of my life.  Have your way with me Lord, I pray.  In Jesus name - AMEN!