Going Through the Fire...

This morning in my time with the Lord I specifically heard the words 'going through the fire'. I meditated on that for a bit and then I knew what God was saying to me. I think for many there is this great misconception that everything is supposed to be sunshine and rainbows if you are a Christian, but we can clearly see through God's word that is not the case. God doesn't always keep us from the fire. In fact, quite the opposite. Most often He is there with us in the fire. He is there in the storm. He is there with us in our trials and the tribulations of life.

The names just flooded to me while I was meditating on God's words 'going through the fire' and then I immediately thought of Psalm 23:4

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

This one scripture tells us that we will walk through some difficult things, but also tells us that God will be with us. We do not have to fear the shadows that come because He has already told us He will comfort us. 

So, then God is not about keeping us from everything that is happening in our world or even our own lives. We can clearly see all the darkness around us. You and I are not just burying our heads in the sand and saying nothing is happening. Because of the wonderful stories shared with us through our Bible, we see that He is with us, but we are still having to walk through it. Our deliverance isn't before the fire. Our deliverance is in the fire just as it was for the 3 Hebrew men in Daniel 3. 

In Daniel 3 we find the true account of King Nebuchadnezzar having an image of himself created and expecting everyone to bow down to it. The 3 Hebrew men refuse to bow down to the image in Daniel 3:16-18... 

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.” 

This very thing is happening today. Those of us who are willing to stand up are saying 'NO, we will not bow down to your ridiculous gods because we serve the one true living God and He will not abandon us to this tyranny.' King Nebuchadnezzar gets so angry that he has them bound and thrown into a fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than usual to make an example of those who would rebel. Sounds like January 6th to me. Interestingly enough we find in Daniel 3:22...

Therefore, because the king’s command was urgent, and the furnace exceedingly hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. 

Therefore, the men who put the 3 Hebrew men bound into the furnace were burned before they even got them in there. That is how hot it was. Being on the outside the men who threw them in were burnt up. Sounds like Bragg has some serious stuff coming if he doesn't back off, doesn't it? In Daniel 3:24-25 Nebuchadnezzar realizes something that we often forget. He sees it with his own eyes and cannot deny it after watching his own men burn just getting close to the fire.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?”

They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.”

“Look!” he answered, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”

 Jesus was in that fire with them. Notice however that He did not keep them from the fire. He allowed it all to happen, but He was in the fire keeping them safe and helping them to make it through this trial. No matter your age most people can look in their own lives and see times when they were really going through it or having a tough time or facing things they'd never faced before and yet maybe not always in the trial but later when it was all over they could see that Jesus helped them through it and that like the 3 Hebrew men thrown into the fiery furnace when they finally came out they were even more respected and honored for what they'd been through. God was given all the glory. They were now known as men of great faith who trusted God no matter what was happening to them or around them. Daniel 3:28-30...

Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, who sent His Angel and delivered His servants who trusted in Him, and they have frustrated the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they should not serve nor worship any god except their own God! Therefore, I make a decree that any people, nation, or language which speaks anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made an ash heap; because there is no other God who can deliver like this.”

Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego in the province of Babylon.

Now, I am in no way saying God never delivers people before a fiery trial, but I think other true accounts throughout the word of God prove that God allows very difficult trials but if we have faith and truly trust in Him, He will deliver us from the hands of the wicked. Didn't Daniel himself go through his own trial in Daniel 6? The very same thing happened. There are people who hate Daniel because he loves the Lord and so they set a trap for him that he must worship only the gods of King Darius. Like the 3 Hebrew men he just goes on with his life and kneels to pray every day just as he'd always done to God in Heaven. The evil men who hated him go tell King Darius and Darius pulls a Nebuchadnezzar. This time not with a fiery furnace but with a den of Lions. Daniel is thrown in and the Lions do not bother with him, but the next morning when King Darius is stunned to find Daniel is still alive and unharmed, he has the men who turned Daniel in for praying to his God into the Lion's den along with their families and the Lions immediately overtake them.

As I mentioned earlier name after name came to me when thinking about the fiery trials...

• Job went through a fiery trial losing everything he had and everything he loved, but God restored everything and gave him much much more than he'd had before.

• Joseph was not kept from the pit, the palace or the prison. God could have intervened right when his brothers made the decision to cast him into the pit and go home telling their father he'd been killed but God had a plan, and that plan saved a Nation.
• Noah lived in a world that had become so evil God knew it would have to be wiped out. It had become like Sodom and Gomorrah with only evil and wickedness and God could literally only find Noah and his family that he could use to carry on. It took Noah over 100 years to build that Ark. Notice that God didn't come down and build it for him. He didn't magically make it appear. No, Noah and his sons did have to take instructions and build something to preserve their own lives and the lives of the animals. God's deliverance was not comfortable. Imagine not only building the Ark under the persecution he must have experienced but then also having to live with all those animals for months and months until the waters of the flood subsided. God had a plan. He wiped out all the evil and saved the world but kept 8 people to be fruitful and multiply again.
• David was not kept from the prideful jealousy of King Saul who went after him continuously until David literally had to run and hide in caves. As a young man, the Prophet Samuel comes to him and anoints him to be King, but it didn't happen immediately. In fact, it took many years, and even with God on David's side and God calling him a man after His own heart, David fought tooth and nail to not only become King but later to remain King as his own sons turned on him trying to take the Kingdom away from him. David was not kept from all these trials, but God always showed up and delivered David.
• Lazarus could have been kept from dying but God had a plan and that plan was that Jesus would show up when it was too late. When he'd been in the grave for 4 days and it had simply been too long to heal him. Yet Jesus called him forth right in front of the religious rulers of the day showing them all that he did have resurrection power whether they wanted to believe He was the son of God or not. Only God could get the glory out of bringing death to life.
• The children of Israel needed deliverance, but they had to wait 400 years. God's plan grew up before their eyes in Moses being saved from death as a child when the Pharaoh at that time worried, he'd be put to pasture if a true King was born so he had all the baby boys under age two killed so that the Deliverer could not come forth. But God literally used Pharaoh's family to raise Moses and another 40 years in the desert learning to Sheperd and then Moses finally understands that he is part of God's plan to deliver His people. It is estimated that it took at least a year or more for Pharaoh to Let God's People Go.
• Esther had to face Haman, but God showed up right before the Jews were to be killed.
• Elijah faced the prophets of Baal, but God showed up with fire, and hundreds of prophets of Baal were killed in one day.

I could probably list a few more but most importantly there is Jesus. He told the disciples countless times he was going to be taken and arrested and lifted up, but they didn't believe it would happen. Peter said, 'Far be it from you Lord', but Jesus rebuked him. It was God's plan that on that dark day when Jesus died on that Cross and was then buried in that tomb He would defeat death, hell, and the grave for us all. It was darker than dark could get for the disciples who had followed this son of man (Son of God) that they thought was going to come and deliver them from the Romans. That wasn't actually the plan at all. The plan at that time was to save the world from our sin and not just from men who ruled at the time over a few. 

Within 3 days darkness turned to light as the Resurrection came and changed the world forever. The disciples didn't comprehend what was happening just like we don't today. God's plan was mind-blowing and had to be revealed to the disciples and others who followed Him but that plan of redemption from sin has given each of us the opportunity to be saved and to live eternally in Heaven with our Father when we finally pass from this earth.

God is never behind the 8 ball. He is not asleep at the wheel. He knows the end from the beginning and the one who has made himself an enemy of God and His children never gets over on Him. He is not only the God of light but also the God over darkness. 1 John 1:5 tells us that there is no darkness in Him but surely, we are wise enough as children of God to know that He is over darkness. There are countless scriptures that I believe reveal this. Here are only a few.

Exodus 20:21
So, the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.

Amos 4:13
For behold, He who forms mountains, and creates the wind, Who declares to man what his thought is, and makes the morning darkness, Who treads the high places of the earth— The Lord God of hosts is His name.

Darkness is simply something that God separated from the light, but without darkness how would we ever see or recognize the light? What is the point of this particular blog dear ones? I believe what we can see throughout the historical events and stories that we read in our Bible it is all about our perspective. Do we see darkness or look beyond to the light God wants us to see? Do we allow the evils of this world to overtake us and terrify us forcing us to bow down to fear or do we believe God's word and even the prophecies that He has been sharing with us to comfort us in the midst of deep darkness knowing without a shadow of a doubt that God is bigger, greater, stronger, and even more faithful today than He was back in Biblical times? 

Can we look at the lives of Noah, Joseph, Moses, David, Esther, Naomi & even Ruth and so many others and see that in times of great darkness God always had a plan and He always brought forth light and lifted His children up in ways that could have never happened of their own doing?  I've even heard it prophesied that we are going back to Eden. Does that mean everyone? Well, probably not since so many refuse to believe. Some will refuse to repent and turn back to God. Some will pridefully continue believing they can make their own way and leave God out entirely. They've yet to realize they are nothing without God. We are simply dirt that He chose to form because He wanted a family. 

And I will end with a warning to believers in Christ today. Do not allow yourselves to become those who refuse God's new world and His plan to save us once again because this truly is the last time spoken of in the Bible before the return of Jesus to take his church away for 7 years. When will that be? None of us know, but it is not right now. The truth is the only reason America has not fallen to complete darkness and despair is because Jesus lives in us. The world does not understand this. What we are living today is not hell on earth. Why? Because God's children are still here and therefore Jesus is still here too.

When I hear that God wants to take me back to Eden, I am right on board. You will not find me kicking and screaming or saying I don't want to go. I've lived a difficult life and I for one am looking forward to God's new world without so much evil and wickedness. I'm grateful to be alive today to experience what we are seeing and living through today. I have no fear of any of it and hope that I have shared enough that when threats of war, ships hit our shores and sirens go off that you too will be at complete and total peace. There has truly never been another time in History that can compare to the plans that are unfolding for us even now. Trust God in the darkness dear ones. He is turning darkness into LIGHT!

In His Love & Mine,

Sheryl L. York