Fiery Furnace

I was reading in Daniel 3 today, a familiar passage. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed–nego were bound and to cast into the burning fiery furnace that Nebuchadnezzar, full of fury, commanded that the heat of the furnace be turned up seven times more than it was. Daniel 3:19-20 KJV After they refused to bow down and worship the golden image. Remember?

Something clicked a bit different in me reading this chapter this time.

And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them. Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed–nego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed–nego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort. Daniel 3:27‭-‬29 KJV

Although those three Hebrew boys were cast into the fiery furnace, not because they did something wrong, rather because of their obedience to God, their testimony came through their actions in the fire. We can be in the fire and still be unscathed. Their clothes were neither burned nor did they even smell like fire! All those that witnessed those boys in the fiery furnace saw that they were unharmed and that God was with them!

Sometimes we are put in the fire, out of our obedience to Christ and the very ones that placed us their are observing how we are going to endure the fire. Will they see Jesus in the fire with us? Will they see us come out clean, just like these Hebrew boys? Will they be able to see, know, proclaim for themselves without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is Lord! He is the One True God!

Sometimes as we are in the furnace, it has absolutely nothing to do with us and everything to do with those around us.

*Original photo by Yours Truly