Consecrated for Flame

“The ministry is the most serious thing in the world.”
Martin Lloyd-Jones

“Without the discipline of the inner life, the outward work is but a shadow.”
Thomas à Kempis

“A man’s gifts only make room for him, but his character confirms his place.”
Charles Spurgeon

“To be called to ministry is to be called to suffer.”
F. F. Bruce

“Nothing is impossible to God, but nothing is possible without God.”
William Wilberforce

“True calling always entails sacrifice.”
Os Guinness

It begins not with ambition but with blood. Not with fire from within, but with fire from God. The language itself resists reduction, “you shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests” (Exodus 28:41, ESV). Three commands, one aim: that they may serve. But buried in that middle word, ordain, is the Hebrew idiom that will not be softened: fill the hands. Not assign, not title, not promote. Fill. Before a man serves, his hands must be occupied, held open and invaded by something not his own. The appointment begins not with ceremony, but with weight. This is not about platform or pulpit. This is about hands unable to grasp anything else because they already carry sacrifice. This is the call of every believer, those who serve not in title only, but in priestly commission. The priest is not chosen because he is available or desires it. He is consecrated because he has been claimed. And the sign of that claim is what we carry—sacrifice in our palms, the gravity of another’s life resting against our skin. The appointment is not a call to lead but a command to bear. The hands are not filled with gifting but with offering. Ministry is not a role assumed; it is a death received. And until the hands are filled, there is nothing to give.

Made by Fire and Filling
The process is not rushed. Leviticus 8 makes that clear with a severity that silences modern assumptions: Aaron and his sons are stripped, washed, robed, and anointed. They are not volunteers. They are claimed men. And the ritual does not leave space for improvisation. “At the entrance of the tent of meeting you shall remain day and night for seven days... so that you do not die” (Leviticus 8:35, ESV). Not a suggestion. Not symbolic. If they step out early, they perish. This is not orientation, it is preservation. They are sealed in. Seven days before God, bound to obedience by the threat of judgment. And this is what consecration requires: not willpower, not excitement, but exposure. Unhidden submission. The man whose hands are to be filled must first be emptied. He must stay in the tent of God’s presence, not because the ritual needs more time, but because the man does. The fire does not fall on the unprepared.

What Exactly Is Being Filled?
Then, when the garments have been donned, the oil poured, the blood spilled, then comes the act itself. Not abstraction. Not sentiment. Flesh, the breast and right thigh of a ram, and unleavened bread. Death and sustenance. All pressed into the hands of the priests. “And he placed all these on the hands of Aaron and on the hands of his sons and waved them as a wave offering before the Lord” (Leviticus 8:27, ESV). They do not receive scrolls. They do not receive titles. They receive carcass and grain. They carry the remnants of life and the promise of its consumption. And they do not hold it in solitude. They wave it as an offering in the sight of heaven. To be filled is to carry death before God, not as an act of theater but as a sign of surrender. They are forced to feel its temperature, its weight, its decay. Before they ever lift their hands in blessing, they must lift them in offering. The call to serve does not begin with the desire to lead. It begins with the willingness to die and it is not something hidden.

Consecration Is Not Private
Leviticus 8:3 speaks without apology: “Assemble all the congregation at the entrance of the tent of meeting” (ESV). This is no inner stirring. No private commission. Consecration takes place under the eye of the assembly. There is no place for silent sanctification in a call to serve. A man is not consecrated alone, and he is not consecrated by himself. The act is not assumed, it is witnessed. And it is initiated not by personal resolve but by divine instruction mediated through God’s chosen instrument. This does not flatter modern spirituality. We cherish our inner impressions and our callings whispered in the solitude of prayer. But Scripture will not let us hide. Consecration requires exposure. The priest must be seen holding what others will not touch. No man may fill his own hands. The language is deliberate: they were filled, by another, by command, by blood.

Not Until It Is Finished
“You shall not go outside... until the days of your ordination are completed” (Leviticus 8:33, ESV). This process took seven days. It is a reminder that the process will take as long as God has determined. And until then, nothing moves. The urge to act early is not valor; it is presumption. Holiness has its own timeline. To leave before the process is complete is to die by judgment, not neglect. Jesus did not minister before His time (John 7:30). He did not act on zeal. He waited. Every moment, every miracle, every move, submitted to the hour set by the Father. He did not fill His own hands. He was given the cup, and He drank it. His priesthood was not secured by effort but by obedience, obedience unto death (Hebrews 5:8–10). He passed through Gethsemane. He bore the cross. And only then, only after the blood and the burial, did resurrection follow. The ordination was complete. The offering consumed. This is the pattern to which all who are called must yield: not to shortcut, but to endure, to embody the full weight of divine consecration by walking through the entire season of preparation. There are no shortcuts to holiness. There is no drive-thru consecration. We do not lay hands on a man lightly, not because we are withholding opportunity, but because we are guarding life.

Guarding the Transfer
And so Paul warns: “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others” (1 Timothy 5:22, ESV). To lay hands carelessly is to become complicit. This is not a mere pastoral policy, it is a priestly charge. The laying on of hands is not an act of empowerment, it is an act of agreement. We are not bestowing authority; we are acknowledging consecration to serve. We are saying: these hands have already been filled. To lay hands on the untried is not compassion or inclusion, it is to share in their future sin and bear their fall. It is a betrayal because it releases men before the fire has fallen. It affirms what God has not approved and it has become all too common. Charisma is enthroned. Gifting is confused for glory. And those whose hands remain empty are platformed, celebrated, even envied. We hand microphones to uncrucified flesh. We applaud performance where no blood has been spilled. We call it calling or anointing, but scripture calls it theft (Jeremiah 23:21, John 10:1, Numbers 16:1–5). We celebrate charisma while ignoring character and crown Absaloms (2 Samuel 15:6). We empower those like Simon the Magician, driven by selfish ambition rather than true faith (Acts 8:18–21), and legitimize those like Diotrephes, who loved to put himself first (3 John 9). We applaud those who perform in the name of Jesus without the Holy Spirit— sons of Sceva (Acts 19:13–16). We have not learned. We sacrifice on the mountaintops, but we have not built altars below (Hosea 4:13). The priesthood remains. The shadow has not vanished; it has been fulfilled. To serve is to be a priest, “You yourselves like living stones are being built up... to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices” (1 Peter 2:5, ESV). The requirement has not diminished. The hands must still be filled. But now, instead of blood and grain, we offer bodies. “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1, ESV), and a living sacrifice dies slowly. It burns in real time. It is not lifted up in pride but in trembling. Worship is not a song. It is a surrender. Filled hands do not wave in excitement. They carry the cost. They bear the imprint of crucifixion.

You May Not Serve Empty-Handed
You may not speak if you have not burned (Isaiah 6:6–7). You may not lead if you have not died, not to your brand, not to your name, not to your entitlement to be seen (Philippians 2:5–9, 2 Timothy 2:11–12 , Luke 22:26–27). No one serves God with empty hands. Not because He demands performance, but because He requires offering (Romans 12:1, 1 Samuel 15:22, Hebrews 13:15–16). The priesthood is not a badge. It is a wound. And until you feel the heat, you may not carry His name. This is the theft of our age: we serve without sacrifice. We minister without offering. We speak without being spoken to. We give God our intentions and call it consecration. But the tent of meeting is still guarded and the altar still waits. Have your hands been filled? Not with knowledge. Not with resolve. Not with calling. Not with desire. Not with dreams. But with cost, with consecration, with the unmistakable imprint of death! Have you stayed the full seven days, or have you walked in still wet behind the ears, hands open but unmarked? The Church suffers not from a lack of workers but from a lack of weight. Hands are lifted before the people that were never lifted before God.

Dear reader, when the hands are finally filled, when the days are complete, when the offering has been lifted, then the fire falls (Leviticus 9:24, ESV). This is the order. Yet, we cry out for fire, but we bypass the altar. We seek revival, but avoid true biblical ordination. The Spirit of God is not poured out on convenience. He descends upon consecration, He anoints what has been surrendered, and the grace that falls is never cheap. It consumes the offering, but not the offerer. The fire marks but does not destroy. It accepts what has been rightly given and rejects what is withheld. And when the flame has risen, when those who serve are no longer their own, when the hands still tremble from what they have held, then, and only then “Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them” (Leviticus 9:22, ESV). Not before. Never before.