Before & Behind

Good Day To You,

We have been looking at this passage in the book of Isaiah for the last few weeks. We have come to understand that God is calling his people to remember his active participation with them when he delivered them from the deep waters of the Red Sea and the river of difficulty when the Jordan River was at flood  stage and impassable. Now he speaks to that which they have not yet experienced. The fire of oppression.

When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. ISA. 43:2

This promise spoken here is fulfilled in real time some 350 years later when the children of Israel are in Babylonian captivity, and the Hebrew young men – Shadrach, Meshach and Abendigo – are thrown into the fiery furnace. They are delivered as the Son of God walks among them and communes with them. 

I don’t know my future. I don’t know what I will face tomorrow. You don’t know what will come into your life in the next weeks, months, years. Mankind wants to see into the future to control it, to be prepared to navigate it with certainty. But the truth is no one knows the future except the Creator of it. We can choose to worry about what we might face, or we can trust in the one who holds it and rest in the fact that he will be with us even if it is oppressive, difficult or troublesome. We will walk through fiery trials. But keep your head up, for Jesus has overcome the world. And greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. You will not be stuck in the fire. You will go through it and come out with an encounter with Jesus, walking with you, relating to you in intimacy. And the fire will not char your clothes or singe your skin, just make you more like him. 

Q: Fire is scary but also useful. Name a few benefits from Fire? 

Q: Recall a couple Fire experiences you have had and how you have seen His grace and goodness in it.