“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” (Mosiah 3:19). The word entice comes from a Latin word that literally means to set on fire. Receiving the Holy Ghost has been described as a baptism by fire. If we are to “yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit,” that means that we are letting that fire inside of us. This cleansing, refining fire is an enemy to our natural self. The carnal, devilish part of us will be destroyed by the Baptism by Fire just as surely as our mortal bodies would be destroyed by an actual fire. Now, we can try to harden our heart and fireproof our soul so that we are numb to the piercing, burning purity of truth that the Holy Spirit brings to us, but hardness leads to brittleness, and brittleness to fragility. If we resist the fire of the Spirit, then we will simply burn down to the ashes. But, if we take that fire into ourselves, then we will be purified from the inside out. The destructive power of the fire will burn inside of us, making us stronger and more able to bear the burdens that will be placed upon us. The glory of God is above the brightness of the sun. We have to get used to a little burning if we are going to return to our Heavenly Father and dwell in a Kingdom of Celestial Glory that is more intense than the actual sun. How can we be the light of the world if we won’t let ourselves burn with the light of Christ and the fire of the Holy Ghost? Fighting against the spirit because we are too weak to face the flames is the complete wrong way of looking at things. We have to yield to the burning of the Holy Spirit because it is our weaknesses and flaws that are going to be what burns away as dross and slag, while our strengths and everything that makes us good and noble will be purified and refined and improved. I know walking willingly into the refiner’s fire is terrifying, but once we carry that fire inside of us, then nothing outside of us will frighten us or hold a candle to the blazing bonfire inside.
