Fighting Fire

You never sleep as good at the station as you do at home.  It would have been a quiet night so far except for the snoring of every other dude on duty in the station bunk room. The rock hard mattress doesn’t help.

The fight for just a little sleep has brought you to the very first light of dawn where you close your eyes for what is probably the final time. It’s Saturday morning, so the promise of a couple more hours seems so tempting.

Then, the shrill of an alarm erupts from the station speaker, but its unexpected screams jolt you into a mixed state of alert and fear. As the half second of confusion fades, it’s clear that you have a job to do and not a second to spare. The dispatcher reveals a structure fire with possible occupants and a cold tingle rolls from the base of your neck to tips of your fingers.  We’re going to Jobtown.

The adrenaline propels you across the apparatus floor, where engine 489 awaits your departure. In the minute you’re allowed to turn out, you go from your station pajamas to full bunker gear.

“Get in and light em up, we’re going code 3.”

“You got it, Lt.”

The next few moments are a shrieking blur of hyperactive senses. As the massive red beast you ride shrieks around the corner, the scene down the road is chaotic and desperate. People have gathered in the front yard but wear little more than the frightened stares and bathrobes. The neighbors are evacuating. The smoke has formed a black fog that’s looming over another house as though it’s stalking its next victim. A fraught man stands in the frontyard conducting a sad headcount.

The front door of the house is warm but the view through the window reveals no source of the menace that brought you from the stillness of your bedroom to the chaos of this smoky abode. Without a moment to lose, you breach the entrance with the entire force of your weight on the halligan bar that’s jammed in the frame of the door. The cheap wood shatters and the door springs open.

As you crawl from room to room the reassuring pressure of your partners grip on your foot provides the only comfort in this murky mess. Each movement is labored by the 50 pounds of gear you wear and the axe and fire hose that you drag. Overhead is nothing but dense hot smoke and you know better than to stand up in the thousand degrees of gas above. As you and your partner navigate to the final room on this floor, the glowing of open flame flashes from behind the couch like a beacon warning of imminent danger.

The familiar voice comes over the radio that hangs from your chest pocket. The Incident Commander informs everyone that the boy is safe and that mom forgot to tell dad that he was spending the night with a friend. That leaves only one job to accomplish as you beckon back “Charge the line!” and in seconds, the nozzle in your left-hand springs to life like the head of 200 foot viper, and it wants its freedom.

All of the sudden, it gets uncomfortably warm even inside your flame resistant gear. The orange glow in the corner explodes with blinding light and unbearable heat. The once mild flame in the corner has in a moment fully consumed the ceiling above in a rolling and terrifying canopy of bright orange destruction like a blow torch.  The hallway from which you entered is now a river of burning gas and you’re 8 feet below the surface.

You’re cooked.

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Flashover happens when superheated gasses in the upper layer of the room hit their flashpoint, and turn the once black plume of smoke into a breathing fireball. The problem is that you rarely see it until it’s too late because it hides above a smoke layer.  Even worse, when it ignites, it often goes out the way you came in and can trap you in a room with no egress. By then, it’s too late.

James1:14-15 describes the Flashover of Temptation this way:

“But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desires. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.”

Firefighters study fire behavior to understand how a simple spark can develop into a fully involved structure fire. Notice how the passage above says that the fire behavior of sin is this:

First, the spark of temptation entices us with a sinful desire. Temptation isn’t the same as sin. Everyone is tempted, including Jesus. It’s ever present and the things we are tempted with are common to everyone (1 Cor. 10:13).  What’s interesting, however, is that the Enemy doesn’t come at us with a flamethrower. In fact, Ephesians 6 compares them to flaming arrows in verse 16. Here are some of the arrows he uses:

• It’s only once…
• It’s not that bad…
• Nobody will know…
• I’m not as bad as that guy…

These flaming arrows then hit a fuel source in our lives called desire. Fuel sources lit under control can provide heat and power our vehicles but when they are ignited outside of their intended uses will cause great damage.  There are God-given desires that provide, protect, and promote us but there are also evil desires full of danger that we are warned not to pursue, lest the consequences consume us. When the Enemy targets an unprotected evil desire, it creates a spark.

When we open the door to sealed room and introduce oxygen to heated fuels, they ignite quickly. When we open the door and act on the Enemy’s spark….  It explodes and rages beyond our control leaving destruction behind. And we are trapped and consumed by it.

The charred debris of sin’s flashover is broken relationships, damaged reputations, destroyed careers, and lost trust. You’re left burned and blinded.

A quote that is attributed to multiple authors says this:

“Sin will take you farther than you want to go, it will keep you longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you want to pay.”

Here’s the good news….

We don’t have to fall for sin. It doesn’t have to catch us off guard. We CAN be prepared if we see the signs and take the proper actions and we can even be in a situation to rescue others from it.

I want to tell you a story of a time that I was prepared because I saw the signs and took appropriate action.

I was asked to serve at a camp in Ohio as the “Camp Nurse.” I am a licensed Emergency Medical Technician and, in many states, we are qualified to act as a designated health officer for a camp environment. The nurse’s cabin was the first in a long line of wooden cabins with front porches. 

It was in the morning and all the middle school and high school campers had just taken off to chapel. I was preaching at my local church that weekend, so I decided to stay behind and study for my sermon and be available if I was needed anywhere.

I took my computer and my headphones to the porch because it was a nice day and I wanted to work outside.

As I was sitting there, a couple of young men with weed whips walked between my cabin and the next. There were also a couple of maintenance workers on the front lawn talking.

A few minutes after the young men walked by, I saw what I thought was a cloud of dust float by between my cabin and the one next door. My first thought was “those dudes must have smoked an ant hill with their weed wackers!” A couple moments later, another cloud went by.  Then another. And another. Puff… puff… puff.   I looked up and the two fellas on the front lawn had fixed their attention on the cabin next to me.

I peeked around and saw the window that the smoke was coming from. My training told me that the puffing of smoke coming out of a dark window was the sure sign of an oxygen-deprived fire. I saw the warning sign.

I knew I needed to make sure there was no campers in the cabin. The problem was, the second I opened that door meant I was introducing oxygen to the room and it was going to flash.  I knew the danger.

So, I yelled to the 2 guys on the lawn to call 911. I came around the front of the cabin and got on my hands and knees. I felt the door and it was warm to the touch. I got as low as I could and opened the door. Immediately, the rushing of air entered the cabin from behind me.

I watched as a faint glow on the bottom bunk to the right of the door erupted into a fireball. The fire went up the wall and ignited the heated gases in the air above me. It flashed over my head and burst out the door where my head would have been if I had been standing up.  All because a camper left a cheap battery pack charging underneath his vinyl sleeping bag.

The room was way too hot to enter without my bunker gear but I hollered in see if there were any campers inside and I couldn’t see anyone on the floor where they would have been if they had been trapped inside.

I saw the signs, I knew the dangers, I acted accordingly and was spared from injury or death.

It was just a little bit of smoke. The door was just a little warm. The chances of fire were very small. 

Then the building exploded. But I saw the signs and acted appropriately.

That’s what “Fighting Fire” is all about. We are going to study tactics that firefighters use to be prepared to encounter seen and unseen dangers and apply them to winning the spiritual warfare in our lives and allow us to rescue others. My friend… if you’re finding yourself constantly cooked by sin, there is hope. Let’s go from Victim to Rescuer together.

Debrief:
1. How has temptation or deception overcome you in the past?

2. What warning signs were present?

3. If you were to be in that situation again, how would you prevent yourself from being trapped?

Report to the Chief:

Spend a few minutes in prayer asking God to give you more awareness of the deception and temptation that the enemy ambushes you with.

Feedback

Please use the comments below to give me some feedback. What could have made this post more powerful in your life? Anything not make sense or flow well? Any comments to make it more faithful to Scripture?