I've been battling with a question. I don't really know if anyone could have answered it but me... But it was eating at me for some time.
I don't know how many of you are familiar with the story of the 3 Hebrew boys who were thrown into the fire for not bowing down to a false god that the king created. If you grew up in church I'm sure you remember. If you haven't,well... It's a powerful story... You should check it out in Daniel chapter 3 in the Bible.
Anywho... These 3 guys were LITERALLY thrown into the fire for doing everything right. They were staying faithful to God by not worshipping the fake one. They were punished for doing the right thing and at first glance God never stepped in. It appeared salvation didn't come to the faithful ones.
They were dying faithful servants. They didn't deny God even in what seemed to be their last moments.
That part of the story I couldn't get passed. How could God allow that? Why wouldn't He rescue them? Why allow the terror and confusion that I'm sure they felt as they were bound and condemned as righteous men to their death? With that level of faithfulness God SHOULD have just smote the king or something, right?! Are you with me?!
I just recently experienced a time of testing unlike anything I've ever known. To put it abstractly- I was stripped naked, stoned, beat up, sentenced to death... By people that I loved more than I thought imaginable. I was applying scripture principles to life and I expected to have the results that I perceived to be the consequence of faithfulness... Salvation from the fire. Spared from the pain.
I was fasting and praying and seemingly taking the fault for something I hadn't done in effort to be the peace maker.
I received no grace from man. I wasn't spared from the hurt and pain of the fire- so to speak. The consequence of faithfulness was being tossed into the flames the enemy created to harm me.
For a long time after that (I'd say about the last year in a half or 2 years) I've wrestled with a question that I never thought I would be asking.
Is God truly faithful?
Honestly, and ashamedly, my answer was I didnt think so. He, from what I could tell, hadn't been faithful to me. He allowed my enemies to triumph over me. They won.
That's what I thought, at least. I've been a broken shell of a human. I've been a broken leader. Trying to preach what I wasn't even confident of myself.
I let my story stop at being tossed in the fire. And I was sitting down waiting to die.
But then I thought about the other half of the story of the 3 Hebrew boys. Sure, they were thrown in the fire.
But God was already in the fire. Their testimony wasn't that of tragedy but of triumph that punched their enemy in the face. And those who tried to kill them found their salvation.
Recently, that story has brought me to tears. Because I can see the truth in my furnace.
Sometimes God's faithfulness is actually found IN the fire- not in the sparing.
And my furnace- the things meant to kill, hurt, or shame me- is someone else's salvation.
Ask me today if God is faithful. My answer is unequivocally YES!! Every time! In my faithfulness and unfaithfulness.
He is faithful regardless of me or my enemies. He is faithful because that's who He is.
Knowing that makes the fires of life easier to embrace. Because I know now that I'm not in them alone. God will always be in the fire to spare my life and create a miracle.