The king replied, “But look, I see four men. They’re untied, walking in the middle of the fire, and unharmed. The fourth one looks like a son of the gods.” – Daniel 3:25
When God sets your life on fire, and lets men throw you into the fiery furnace, the only thing that will be burnt…is the ropes that bound you.
The 3 men – Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego – had done nothing wrong. In fact, they’d done everything right. They’d abstained from defiling themselves with the king’s portion. They’d honoured and upheld the covenant of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And they’d refuse to give in to the pressures of man so that they could seek to be a pleasure to God.
And in return for their efforts…the 3 men got thrown into a red-hot fiery furnace.
But that’s not all they got.
They got delivered of everything (and everyone) that bound them.
And more importantly, they got a special visitation…from God, Who is a “very present help in trouble”. (Psalm 46:1)
That was a huge deal.
Because their Covenant with God, was one of times of special visitation. God only visited with you at special moments. The High Priest could only go before God at certain times of the year. The Holy Spirit visited with men and women for a particular moment, and then departed.
So imagine how much more awesome it is for you whose body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, “who is in you” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
God doesn’t just visit with you…He lives in you.
But here’s the thing.
This God who lives in you is a “very present help in trouble”. This means that there are certain levels of His activity that He only reveals in the middle of a crisis.
And this means that when God wants to reveal something about Himself to you, He does it by allowing you to be thrown into a burning cauldron of catastrophe.
Death, divorce, sickness, rape, war, complications in your relationships, financial issues…
God allowed your life to be thrown into those situations, so that He could do something with you that He couldn’t do any other way.
So when you feel that your life is on fire, and you wonder why God would allow something like this to happen to a person who has been working hard to do everything ‘right’…stop wondering, and start looking.
Look for the 4th man who looks like a son of God.
Look for the presence of the God who works all things – yes, even this – together for your good.
Look at your situation through the eyes of Faith, and see that what man sees as a terrifying end (being thrown into a super-heated furnace), is actually the beginning of a new experience of walking with God, free of absolutely everything that bound you.
This is not the end. This is the beginning of something truly amazing.
Believe this word, step out on it in faith, and watch how you walk in that which others were consumed by.
Look for the 4th Person.