An Illustration-Light My Fire

Can't wait to make this camp fire cake.

This is too good not to pass along. I found this illustration in a 1990 sermon by John Piper.
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/you-shall-receive-power-till-jesus-comes

When we recognize how much God loves us a fire is lit inside us propelling us to go and tell!

An Illustration from Lloyd-Jones

"Let me use an illustration from Martin Lloyd-Jones in his book Joy Unspeakableto describe the difference between common Christian living and what happens when the Holy Spirit "clothes" a person with power or "comes upon" a person with this unusual power.

He says it is like a child walking along holding his father's hand. All is well. The child is happy. He feels secure. His father loves him. He believes that his father loves him but there is no unusual urge to talk about this or sing about it. It is true and it is pleasant.

Then suddenly the father startles the child by reaching down and sweeping him up into his arms and hugging him tightly and kissing him on the neck and whispering, "I love you so much!" And then holding the stunned child back so that he can look into his face and saying with all his heart, "I am so glad you are mine." Then hugging him once more with unspeakable warmth and affection. Then he puts the child down and they continue their walk.

This, Lloyd-Jones says, is what happens when a person is baptized with the Holy Spirit. A pleasant and happy walk with God is swept up into an unspeakable new level of joy and love and assurance and reality that leaves the Christian so utterly certain of the immediate reality of Jesus that he is overflowing in praise and more free and bold in witness than he ever imagined he could be.

The child is simply stunned. He doesn't know whether to cry or shout or fall down or run, he is so happy. The fuses of love are so overloaded they almost blow out. The subconscious doubts—that he wasn't thinking about at the time, but that pop up every now and then—are gone! And in their place is utter and indestructible assurance, so that you know that you know that you know that God is real and that Jesus lives and that you are loved, and that to be saved is the greatest thing in the world. And as you walk on down the street you can scarcely contain yourself, and you want to cry out, "My father loves me! My father loves me! O, what a great father I have! What a father! What a father!"

What Happened at Pentecost

I think this is basically what happened at Pentecost. And has happened again and again in the life of the church. They were so filled with the fullness of God—they were overwhelmed with the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of Christ—that they began (as Acts 2:11 says) to speak "the greatnesses of God." Their mind was full of a fresh, new, breathtaking vision of God and their mouth overflowed with prophetic praise—sons and daughters, old and young, slave and free.

I believe that this kind of experience is what Jesus meant by the "witnessing" in Acts 1:8 that will be able to extend the gospel to the end of the earth. "You will receive this power . . . and you will be my witnesses." You will no longer be merely advocates who can prove like a good lawyer that Jesus rose from the dead. But under the influence of this power—this experience of the Spirit of the risen Christ—you will speak with the unwavering assurance of one who has tasted and knows the reality so immediately that all doubt is gone. You move from being an advocate of Christianity to being a witness of the living Christ. You move from simply deducing Christian truths from valid premises to proclaiming them boldly as experienced realities. This is the power and the witness that will take Christ to the end of the earth."

You know when you look at someone and you think..."I want some of that! Whatever she's eating or breathing in must be mighty good for the soul."  Must maybe it's Jesus!