God’s beauty is powerfully revealed in the many descriptions of His appearance in the Word. The ones that impact my heart the most at this time are the descriptions that relate to His fiery appearance. For example, Revelation 4:3 states that God is like a sardius stone in appearance, or like a fiery red ruby. When I have asked the Lord what this characteristic means to me personally in my life, He revealed to me it meant that He was jealous for me when I focused on anything or anyone else other than Him, including ministry work and my family! Deut 4:24 describes God as a consuming fire and reveals that He is a jealous God. The fact that the God who stretched out the heavens, formed the spirit of man within Him, and laid the foundations of the earth is jealous for our time, attention, and the desires of my heart makes us feel so special, valuable, and wanted. It’s almost unfathomable, and when this penetrates our hearts, it draws us into deeper intimacy with Him!
He also showed me that His fiery appearance describes the type of love that God has for us – it is intense, full of desire, initiating, always reaching out and moving toward us – not weak, mild or “impersonal and universal,” but personal and passionate. His love for us, like fire, burns through anything in its path, it is not blocked by obstacles. It never stops coming, no matter what obstacles we or the enemy may try to put in its path. His love is relentless, it won’t ever stop radiating toward us. It is intent on burning through to our hearts, nothing can stand in its way, nothing can turn down its flame, nothing can stop it or make it turn around and go in the other direction. As Romans 8:39 clearly describes, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.
Whenever you may feel that His love is not present, that He couldn’t love you the same because of your failures and sin, or whenever you feel distant from Him because your eyes are on your circumstances instead of His throne room, this description of His appearance proves that He and His love never change. Rather, what does change is the focus of your attention, and we are the ones who put up the blocks to His love by focusing on others, our circumstances, our fears, hurts, insecurities – all the lies that we believe about ourselves and about God. The intensity of God’s love toward us never weakens, not for any reason under the sun!
