Stay in the Fire!!!

A few years ago, a friend of mine was going through a difficult period. He was feeling pressured on all sides, but I told him to “stay in the fire”. He wasn’t fired up when I told him this but understood that God was with him in the fire and was doing a work in him with it. Later, my friend would often use these same words to encourage me to stand firm in my adversities knowing that God was using the furnace of affliction to purify me like gold. It is not easy, but it is necessary. And as I read this devotion from Charles Spurgeon recently, I reflected on how God uses our fiery trials for good.

Our heavenly Father sends us frequent troubles to try our faith. If our faith be worth anything, it will stand the test. Gilt is afraid of fire, but gold is not: the paste gem dreads to be touched by the diamond, but the true jewel fears no test. It is a poor faith which can only trust God when friends are true, the body full of health, and the business profitable; but that is true faith which holds by the Lord's faithfulness when friends are gone, when the body is sick, when spirits are depressed, and the light of our Father's countenance is hidden.

A faith which can say, in the direst trouble, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is heaven-born faith. The Lord afflicts His servants to glorify Himself, for He is greatly glorified in the graces of His people, which are His own handiwork. When "tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope," the Lord is honoured by these growing virtues.

We should never know the music of the harp if the strings were left untouched; nor enjoy the juice of the grape if it were not trodden in the winepress; nor discover the sweet perfume of cinnamon if it were not pressed and beaten; nor feel the warmth of fire if the coals were not utterly consumed. The wisdom and power of the great Workman are discovered by the trials through which His vessels of mercy are permitted to pass.

God is making us into His masterpiece through our difficult times. He is the Master Potter and creates us into the vessel He wants us to be. But this process is not always easy.  Google AI told me that in the older days “clay pots were primarily made using hand-building techniques like pinching (forming a ball of clay by pinching it into shape) and coiling (stacking ropes of clay to build the walls). After forming, the pots were dried and then hardened in a bonfire or pit-firing, a method of baking them in hot ashes or a hole in the ground.”

Do you ever feel that God has left you in the fire or that you are hidden away in a pit of troubles? Well, that’s the work of the Potter. I have seen videos in which the potter pounds the clay when it is not being formed in the way he likes.  We must always remember that we are being shaped by God for His purposes.

Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Jeremiah 18:3-4.

God continues to make beauty from the ashes created by the fiery situations we face. But we should never forget that He is with us in the fire and the fire is for His purpose. Therefore, we will not be consumed. We may want to leave the fire. That is a natural way to feel. But, when the three Hebrew boys were tied up and thrown into a furnace which was heated seven times its normal heat, they walked about loose with a fourth man in the fire unharmed and God was glorified.

Nebuchadnezzar responded and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him, violating the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God. Therefore I make a decree that any people, nation or tongue that speaks anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap, inasmuch as there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way. Daniel 3:28-29

Our fiery ordeal is for the glory of God, so we must stay in the fire until God is ready to take us out knowing His timing is perfect.