When Fire Was Normal

Picture this: A gathering of believers in a cramped Jerusalem courtyard. No PowerPoint. No worship band. No bulletins or programs. Just ordinary people, fishermen, tax collectors, widows, waiting in expectant silence.

Then suddenly, the room shakes. Flames appear over their heads. They begin speaking in languages they never learned. A crippled man walks. A dead girl opens her eyes.

This wasn't a special revival service. This was Tuesday.

The early Church didn't chase after the miraculous. They lived in it. And the reason might surprise you: they had no other option. They had no Bibles to study, no seminaries to attend, no celebrity pastors to follow. What they had was far more dangerous and far more powerful: they had the indwelling Spirit of God, and they knew how to access Him.

Here's something that should blow your mind: for the first several hundred years of Church history, most believers never owned a Bible. Many couldn't read. The canon wasn't even settled until centuries after Pentecost. The Gospels were written decades after the resurrection, and scrolls were rare, expensive, and inaccessible to ordinary people. So how did they know what to believe? How did they grow in faith? How did they avoid heresy?

They lived from the Inside.

Christ had taken up residence in their hearts through the Spirit. That indwelling presence became their teacher, their guide, their very foundation. Paul wrote it plainly: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" This wasn't poetry. It was their reality. Discipleship wasn't a curriculum. It was relationship. New believers weren't handed study guides; they were grafted into communities where prayer, prophecy, healing, and holiness were practiced daily. Faith wasn't taught. It was caught. The inner life wasn't an elective. It was essential.

If you asked the early believers what seemed strange about Christianity, they wouldn't point to miracles or prophecy. What would seem bizarre to them was the idea of following Jesus without the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit wasn't a theological category or a Sunday morning add-on. He was their life. That's why the apostles defended His holiness so fiercely. When Simon the sorcerer tried to buy spiritual power, Peter rebuked him with fire: "May your money perish with you!" When Ananias and Sapphira lied about their offering, they fell dead on the spot. These weren't overreactions. The early Church understood something we've lost: to lie to the Church was to lie to the Spirit. To fake the fruit was to offend the root.

Their faith was communal, yes, but it was rooted in the unseen. They shared possessions and bore one another's burdens because they were connected to something deeper than social contracts or moral duty. They were vessels of the same divine fire. They expected the Spirit to speak, and He did. They expected persecution, and they endured it with love. Above all, they understood what we are in danger of forgetting: the kingdom of God is not first external, but internal. It is not a program but a Presence.

Jesus Himself prepared them for this kind of life. Again and again, He turned their eyes inward. "The kingdom of God is within you." "Abide in Me, and I in you." "Go into your inner room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret." The promise was staggering: to love Him was to become His dwelling place. The apostles carried this vision forward with urgency. Paul confessed, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." Peter spoke of "the hidden person of the heart," precious in God's sight. John wrote with quiet confidence, "By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit." This wasn't abstract theology. It was lived experience. Their entire world had been turned inside out by Pentecost, and they knew it. They were the new tabernacle, living stones filled with divine fire.

We live in an age of abundance. Endless sermons, books, podcasts, conferences. We have more access to biblical teaching than any generation in history. And yet, so many believers feel distant from God. We know more about Him than ever before, but we often sense Him less. Why? Because we've replaced presence with programs. We've traded intimacy for information. The early Church had none of our resources, yet they walked in power we can barely imagine. They didn't need a building to encounter God. They carried Him within. They didn't need a manual to hear His voice. They had learned to abide in the secret place.

Here's the stunning truth: the same Spirit that filled them is available to you. The invitation into the inner life has never been withdrawn. What they discovered in the Upper Room, Christ within, the hope of glory, is still accessible today. But it requires something our modern Church has largely abandoned: stillness, surrender, and the discipline of interior communion.

The question isn't whether the Spirit is still moving. He is. The question is whether we've grown so accustomed to living without His manifest presence that we no longer expect it, or even miss it. The early Church didn't thrive because they had better strategies. They thrived because they were filled, led, and sustained by the Spirit of the living God. That same fire is still burning. The same invitation still stands.

Will you enter the Inner Room? Will you learn again to abide, not just believe, in the One who dwells within? The secret place is not a relic of the past. It's the forgotten foundation of authentic Christian life. And it's time we remembered.

Pastor Scot