Fire Fall Down By Hillsong United

Some of the lyrics to a song we sang this morning were "Your fire fall down fall down on us as we pray as we seek." It begs the question, what is meant by fire? When we sing this, what are we intending? I reckon many would say it refers to the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, the H.S. apparently comes down on the disciples in the form of flames. Personally, I have never experienced nor heard testimony to anything like that happening, so to me I cannot consider that to mean the Holy Spirit. Indeed, I imagine if I were to really penetrate the thoughts of those who answered Holy Spirit, I would not find that they believe and expect the Holy Spirit to come down on them manifested as fire, as they would claim to believe happened to the disciples so many centuries ago. For me, when I sang it (in my head- I can't play bass as well as I would like and still sing at the same time!) I fully intended it to be understanding. So much of God is unknown and convoluted by men and their belief systems, I would love nothing more than to catch a glimmer of truth about our deity. I'd be curious to know what each person's "fire" is that they want from God, that thing that they truly seek.

Intersection of Justice and Forgiveness

What a difficult question. My answer is this: Do what is beneficial. If someone needs punishment to learn a lesson, give them punishment. If the person is truly repentant, offer forgiveness to teach them grace. If others need to know that punishment will follow particular actions, proffer punishment. In each scenario, try to find what will do the most good. In a sense, we leave feelings out of it and try to look objectively at the situation and make a good decision. Of course, this is extremely easy to implement, assuming your God.