The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames . . . killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. (Dan. 3:22)
I’VE SEEN THE INSIDE of our brick plant’s industrial kiln. If you peer through a tiny opening in the door, you can just make out the glowing, white-hot forms of our product passing through the burn zone inside. But you’d better make it quick; even at a distance, the thousand-degree heat is unbearable.
If Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace was anything like that, then I know something of the terror those condemned Hebrews faced as the soldiers prodded them closer to its fiery mouth. I can feel the blistering temperature rising and sense their own amazement as they survived the trip unscathed, watching their executioners succumb beside them. It wouldn’t be farfetched to imagine how, in that moment, they suddenly realized God was with them in the heat or they would have already be dead. And so they plunged with supernatural confidence into the glowing maw beneath.
There’s a lesson in that for me. I don’t need to wait for fiery trials to reveal God at work in my life. If I choose, I can become prayerfully sensitive to how my Savior is constantly turning down the heat on lesser evils that might otherwise destroy me. Discerning His presence outside the “burn zone” prepares me to walk with confidence through life’s hottest fires so that, while others worry about surviving the flames, I can point to the One who has already extinguished them.
Contemplate one way God is preserving you from evil and thank Him.
Johnathan Kana lives with his wife and two children in rural central Texas. When he’s not writing, he enjoys playing piano and composing music.
© 2017 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission.
