If you’ve been in Spokane this week, you know that it’s looked like the whole town is on fire at times.  Wind and power lines seem to have conspired to spark numerous blazes across the Inland Northwest that have claimed two dozen homes but thankfully no lives.  How nice it was to wake up this morning to clear air and blue skies!  Please keep praying for our firefighters, those who have lost their homes and all Spokanites—that we will be reminded that we need the Lord God every day to just keep our beautiful city from self-destructing.

Speaking of being on fire, just a thought or two about something we often pray: “Lord, please set us on fire with the life of your Holy Spirit and zeal for You!”  Seems like a pretty benign, nice, simple prayer, doesn’t it? 

But asking for the fire of God to grip our lives is, in some ways, a very “dangerous” prayer.  O, we all need the good things God’s holy presence brings like purity, passion and zeal for God.  But it’s easy to overlook the price when you’re fixated on the product.  

Experiencing the fire of God in our lives always consumes something.  Whether it is an offering someone brought (like Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:1), or a hot coal on impure lips (as with Isaiah in Isaiah 6:7), the fiery presence of our holy God comes at a cost. But that is precisely why we need God’s holy presence every day of our lives.  We need God to consume the worthless, empty and sinful parts of our lives with His very holy presence.  And when he does, everyone will see the smoke and smell the change!

This weekend at Mosaic, we’ll be looking at The Way of Holiness in our series Living in the Grip of God’s Holiness.   Just as we saw last week that holiness leads to happiness, so this week we’ll begin looking at the way God has laid out for all of us to experience holiness.

But we’ll be doing a lot more than that Sunday.  We’ll also be celebrating some of the transitions we’re in as a church as well as talking very concretely about the faith, muscle and resources it’s going to require to take this next big step into our “Promised Land” of the new building.  God has done so many amazing things to get us this far that I’m convinced it’s going to be an amazing fall in our faith journey with Jesus. 

And don’t forget Sunday’s OFFICE MOVE & BBQ POTLUCK at the new building at 12:00 p.m.  We’ll be praying over this new gift from God from 12:00-12:30 and then sharing food from 12:30-1:00 (hopefully no ‘burnt offerings’)  followed by rolling up our sleeves and moving our office and storage stuff over to the new building at 1:00 p.m.  If you haven’t signed up yet but would like to attend, please email Menesia at with your reservation.   

See you in His holy presence,

Pastor John