Flames

On the day of Pentecost, all the believers were meeting together in one place. 
Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm,
and it filled the house where they were sitting. 
Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. 
And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit. 
Acts 2:1-4a

In recent years, a deep longing has grown in my soul for a corporate worship gathering marked by reverence, awe and the power of God’s presence. I’ve often found myself weeping in prayer, asking the Lord to lead me to a place that honors the Father for who He is, centers worship on the Son and creates space for the Holy Spirit to move freely. While I regularly encounter and delight in the beauty of the Trinity in the secret place, my heart continues to yearn for that same depth in a shared, communal setting. At times, I wondered if what I was longing for even existed in today’s world and whether I was hoping for something too idealistic.

Until recently.

I was out of town for work and visited a church that I’m familiar with from afar. Thanks to a friend, I was able to get in early and observe worship practice. Unintentionally, that put me smack in the middle of their pre-service volunteer huddle. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. I’ve seen huddles before, but I quickly realized this one was different.

The devotional shared was short but weighty. It was a simple and sincere invitation to remember Who they were serving. When they prayed, it wasn’t a rushed, transitional prayer. It was a holy moment. You could feel it. They weren’t trying to move to the next thing. They were making space for the only thing that mattered.

Before the service even began, I found myself already full, moved by the way the Spirit was welcomed in the margins. When the worship began, something unexpected happened. The worship leaders didn’t open the service with a scripted greeting. They didn’t explain what was coming. They didn’t walk us through any transitions. They didn’t tell the congregation how to respond.

They just worshiped, and it was enough.

They were so clearly engaging with God personally and reverently that it pulled the room upward with them. They weren’t instructing us. They were showing us what it looks like to come boldly before the throne, and the room followed. It didn’t feel like a performance. It felt like holy communion with Adonia.

I looked around, and it struck me how many people were worshiping. Eighty percent or more of the people around me were visibly, deeply engaged with hands lifted, eyes closed and voices raised. Each person seemed to be caught up in their own personal moment with God.

This experience gave me a new vision for what a corporate gathering can be. It looked like Pentecost. There wasn’t one central or institutional flame for others to catch but countless individual flames burning brightly all across the room.

Acts 2 doesn’t say one flame appeared on the stage or in the middle of the room for everyone to gather around. It says tongues of fire separated and came to rest on each of them. Every believer was filled and lit. It wasn’t a shared fire but rather a personal one, and that’s the picture that keeps echoing in my spirit.

Church isn’t meant to be a single flame we circle once a week, hoping to ignite our own. It’s meant to be a room full of flames as each person shows up already burning, already carrying something holy that they foster and feed regularly. When we bring our own flame, the room catches fire at a corporate gathering.

It sincerely breaks my heart to say that the distinguishing factor of that experience was that the individual people of the gathering clearly commune with the Lord regularly, deeply and genuinely. Those people knew how to talk to and worship before they ever walked in those doors.

They weren’t attending a service.
They didn’t wait to be led.
They were offering themselves.
They arrived ready to lead themselves into the presence of God.
Individually but together.
Not consumers but worshipers.

Maybe that’s the invitation for all of us:

To stop looking for a fire to ignite us but instead tend the flame we’ve been given.
To arrive at the gathering already burning.
To prepare our hearts long before we park the car and walk through the doors.

Church isn’t meant to set us aflame; the Holy Spirit does that. Church is the gathering of those who are already lit. When we MAKE ROOM, the flame is kindled in the secret place, carried into the sanctuary and consecrated to the One who is worthy because He is the treasure. He is the prize.