Day 3542 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Daniel 3:25 NIV

Unbound and unharmed.

It seems there’s a rather constant unraveling of all we think we know and thus feel safe to assume as seen inside this faith that makes the last first and demands the first understand their place as still underneath the feet of He who is the head of what is this body that is the church that carries this torch that tries to tell the world that nothing is done without His involvement, oversight, inspiration, or, in perhaps most cases anymore, condemnation.

For there is nothing on earth that isn’t His and thus nothing which happens can happen without His presence or purpose being proven.

Even if upside down.

I mentioned that idea yesterday in what, looking back, was in many ways, perhaps, one of the most theologically theoretical threads in what is this vast expanse of what’s been just a man trying to convey the endless thoughts and truths that I’m finding Him writing within my heart as it so slowly heals from what’s been a life left to this hell of seeking all this world both sells and tells to all of us who thus think we know it all, just upside down.

And I realize, honestly I do, that many of these daily messages might come across as disorganized and messy, a maintained monstrosity in many ways. And I, in that, understand that some of what I say might not make sense, for believe me, there are more times than I’d have ever imagined in which I sat with what was just written in a wonder as to where it came from or for what it might accomplish. But I suppose that such is the substance of such a stance that I’m learning how to take upon what are not my own two feet but rather a feeble prayer here and there from a heart that I hope is as after His as I know it’s not been in times before.

For I still look back and see the clarity of a life given to the common confusion of a culture so inconsiderate that it contends against the Creator in what is a contest of epic proportions proving us each an episcopal failure in regard to the more apt presence of fear as opposed to faith. Indeed, as I’ve mentioned in a prior post, I think (the notes at this point for things I feel the need to share are all but out of control!), but it seems that fears are in fact a rather amazing evidence of our faith’s failure to be faithful to anything but that of which we’ve so clearly come to be afraid.

And in fact, anger is, if anything, just a hiding place for our fears to not feel unjustified despite our having found them only within the inability for us to walk by faith as opposed to the sight upon which we’ve come to rather rely. And this furthering evidence of our fear being the substance of a lack of faith proves it’s something seen both throughout Scripture and too in our society still today. For even now it feels that folks unleash anger and hatred and disagreement and disappointment and just an overall general disgust upon anything of which they themselves are afraid.

All to justify their fears of not overcoming the worries and insufficiencies that have come to all but define their lives.

And because such a viral dissolving of the personal responsibility borne by just being alive has instead become something seen of such substance as limitation or hindrance or hostility to comfort and complacency, people know only to be angry about the efforts and energy other people are putting in to overcome those same fears and those same failures. And thus anger as wielded by wayward humans is not much but a disguise meant to hide the inability to fight for the better that we sometimes accidentally acknowledge or admit others are finding.

Yes, anger is but a hiding place for fear which has sadly become nothing but an excuse for failure, or, because of our pride’s unwillingness to embrace our failures and faults, a reason to even go so far as to hurt others in order to hopefully remove this person or group who is exhibiting a faith which is clearly contrary to our fear of nothing being all we’ve become convinced we are.

Take Nebuchadnezzar for example from within this passage in Daniel, one of which I highly encourage everyone to read and study and spend some quality time with as it’s something that I feel will prove most useful in the coming days and weeks of whatever time we’ve left within a world that’s all but unwilling to right anything.

Within this passage this king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, had set up this idol, a statue, and proclaimed a statute that demanded everyone within earshot to bow down and worship this worthless image as if to pay homage and honor to the king who so sought to come up with such a debauchery. And most did. But the problem to be found within anything in which most do as they’re told to, those who don’t stand out more. Such as the three that ended up irking the king to the point of blatantly denying his most foolish idea to worship the created rather than the only Creator.

Made him so mad in fact that he had this furnace heated seven times hotter than normal, so hot in fact that the soldiers tasked with throwing ol’ Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into their punishment for having so refused the king his self-proclaimed worship, those soldiers were burned up on the way up to take care of this aggravation of king Nebuchadnezzar.

Didn’t get it though, watching his own men perish trying to ensure these criminals punished.

Got the picture a little later though.

For after these men fell, firmly tied mind you, into this furnace, things didn’t quite go as the world had every reason to assume. No, verse 24, “then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, ‘Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?’” “Certainly, sir” said said advisers. There were three, and they were tied by those who’d already died just trying to get close enough to this inferno to eliminate this enemy of the state.

But wait! There’s more!!

Four in fact, one more than expected, and somehow too not a tie in sight. They were bound, but then they weren’t. They were three, but now they’re four. Who’s this fourth? Whose image? Whose inscription? Whose purpose? Whose protection? Firstborn among the dead.

We’ve been on this string for a week or so now, talking about our hobbled fascination with such things as fame and fortune. Talked yesterday about how Christ is the head of everything and thus everything is in Him and thus too for Him as it’s all from Him. Even death. He came to lead the way there so that we could find a faith that finally forsakes our fears and allows us to draw near to where none want to go because of all we think we know.

Like fires burning alive those who don’t do as advised. Or hungry lions walking away from an easy meal. Or walls falling down, waters ripping apart, ground splitting open and giants being toppled by a tiny guy with a sling and a handful of rocks. Makes no sense, not any of it. And I supposed that’s why so many around here still find this faith so foolish. It’s because this world has taught us to be faithful only to our fears as proven in our pride, each of us thus so seeking to protect our failures and deny our flaws that we’ve become unable to even imagine what might be possible beyond our assumptions so prideful.

The king didn’t assume that these three men would make it, for that’s not at all what his punishment was designed to accomplish. Definitely didn’t expect there to be a forth who, “looks like a son of the gods.”

And that’s why there was four. For Christ met those men inside that impossible so as to both save them, yes, but also to show Himself to a world that cannot see past itself to where true faith finally begins. For faith begins not in us as it’s not a matter of our own making. And yet we spend so much time still trying to make it all make sense. But only because we still believe in only our doubts as designed to keep us safe here inside this incessant selfish assumption that we might actually know something.

Afraid of the fact which says that we know nothing, something both fact and fatal. For it binds us to relying on us to know enough to make it to what we want and through what we can’t. Indeed, it’s even that latter that we cannot anymore seem to see having so become a people so certain that there is nothing we can’t do. But friends, if we only knew. If we only knew how little we are, how unable we’ve become, how weak we walk and how worthless our wants.

They’re all just like that idol that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, just a reflection of us that we seek to hear worshiped and applauded. All to drown out the noise of that voice that says we need the fire, we need the flood, we need to fail and fall apart because that’s where He meets us finally willing to seek Him.

For sadly we seem to always only want Him in the easy way. We seek Him in the moments so ordinary that we don’t really need anything other than to focus on our wants. We cry out most days from hearts overfed and fully stuffed and ask Him to do more still, not knowing gratitude for what He does at all.

Because we miss half of it, three-quarters, 99% perhaps.

For He is in all things, but we’ve sadly come to hate those places and problems in which we could see Him best and feel His closest. Like the fire. We avoid it. The rain, run from it. See the struggles and shake our heads in doubt and scream out loud wondering as to why He’d send something so hard to come for us. Never wondering as to whether it’s not just for us. Yes, what if it’s not even about us at all?

See, these three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they knew their faith, it’s why they refused to bow down and worship something that wasn’t God. They knew where they stood, and thus He who stood with them, behind them, before them. Yes, they knew that God would do what He’s always done, either protect His people or prove His purpose, maybe both.

Maybe not.

Verse 17. “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand.”

18. “But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

“Even if He does not.” Unbound and unharmed, just four men walking around between the fire and flame as if they belonged there.

What if our faith was of such audacity to imagine that we belonged in whatever situation or circumstance, chaos or confusion that God might see fit to lead us toward? Yes, what if we could see beyond the fires we’ll face and the failures we’ll find? What if we had the courage to not just believe but indeed to know that wherever we go and through whatever said going goes, that He does indeed go before us to lead. “Firstborn among the dead.”

This has always been one of my personal favorites from Scripture as it just seems to speak to this extremity to our faith that we seldom find reason to imagine we could find. For we stay inside. We stick to the streets already paved and always already known. We create these imaginary limits to hopefully keep us safe in life, and sadly, this same effort has always spilled into our faith too. We just can’t seem to believe beyond the perceived possible.

And we wonder why we never see Jesus or feel Him near us or experience any growth in regard to the glory for which we were made.

What if His glory is made best in the grave? What if it’s within the flame that we finally feel our faith? What if lions doing what lions don’t is what’s needed to help another see that He is everything we can’t imagine? Because friends, fact is that He is in everything. He is in all things as all things are for Him as all are from Him. Even furnaces. Failures. Fears and freak outs. Because maybe it’s in those moments when we’re scared or uncertain or certain to be scorched and scarred that He’s finally found closet by we who so tend to keep Him at a distance measured by our glory.

See, so often in life we crave the easy and simple as know that we can simply handle it. We can glean glory for ourselves from those simple days, and our vanity loves that. For kings we think ourselves! And we live our lives setting ourselves up as if images of importance, so priceless that we cannot be bothered by problem or punishment. But friends, what our vanity needs more than being appeased is to be destroyed. That’s why He bring in the fires. Bring on the famine. Usher in the failures and fears as within them we’ll feel that this was never upon us to manage or make sense.

And even further, we just might find that within life’s difficulty is a display which seems to say that it might not be about us at all. Maybe there’s more to it than what we think of it. Maybe we might learn something about ourselves, about our faith, but maybe others might as well. After all, it’s His story, His glory, and in that, our opportunity to see that it’s His ability that overcomes our insufficiency.

So we need the fire, to feel the flame, to face the fallout so that we can finally realize that we can’t do this alone, and in that, finally seek the One who’s already done all that we’ll ever need.

And maybe even inspire someone else to do what this pompous king ended up doing in verse 29 where he issued another statue, an updated decree if you will. “Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”

And thus our God proved Himself both faithful to the three but also fearsome to the many who thought they knew that these three knew nothing in going against what some worldly image told them to do. And the knowledge of God was spread further by it.

And that’s the lesson. It’s that sometimes in life God will send us into situations in which we’re going to be held to the fire, be it just to refine us or to shine through us. Sometimes that fire might be fanned by misunderstandings, mainstream media, social media and the cesspool that such has become. Yes, we might end up finding and feeling an awful lot of heat and hate in the days ahead. For again, anger is but fear in hiding, and fear is but faith unwilling to fight.

And the fact is that while some learn from the things God does to show Himself to us, many don’t. And well, this means that many won’t understand us, will find us to be fools for following a faith they feel foolish, will perhaps persecute us or try to punish us or finish us so as to not be moved.

None of it matters all that much as we can trust that whatever comes is able to glorify God despite how we may think it looks. For nothing in life is a matter of what we think, feel, assume. This is all God’s stage and He will do upon it whatever might benefit whomever He’s trying to reach. You and I are just here to refuse to waver from this Way He’s called us to follow.

If it leads into the flames or the desert or the lion’s den, doesn’t matter. If it’s all from Him then we can walk boldly into it knowing that His will will be done. And as we know that His will is for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose, then let us walk this with purpose knowing that whatever it means or wherever it leads, it’s for His purpose and thus our good.

And maybe for the good of those who see Him do the impossible with us, for us, through us.

Such as us walking through all this chaos and confusion, hatred and delusion still somehow managing to make it home unbound and unharmed.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold