Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father reveal himself to us in new and mighty ways today! Father, we trust you and we love you, but we are weak. We need your presence and your guidance. Help us to trust you more with each day. Let us grow into mature Christians, able to be faithful to your son Jesus regardless of the circumstances. Father, in the name of your son Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit within us, help our faith to be grounded in who you are! Thank you God for being who you say you are!
Your Morning Song: "Eye of the Storm" by Ryan Stevenson
Your Morning Scripture: Daniel 3:16-18
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
These verses come from a story many of us know well, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon demands that they bow down and worship a statue of himself. They refuse. They are thrown into the furnace and God saves them.
But sometimes we read the Bible too quickly, our familiarity softening and dulling the edges of the verses until we easily miss very important nuances.
The three men who deny Nebuchadnezzar trust that God will save them, "But if not" they still won't worship.
This small statement catches me for a moment every time I read it or think through the story. Even if God does not rescue them, they still will not bow. What an incredible, odd, unsettling faith. Tethered only to God's holiness and not to earthly happiness (like not being burned alive).
What sort of faith do we have? Is our belief in Jesus, our trust in our Heavenly Father, and out walking with and in the Spirit tied directly to our circumstances? Do we have faith in God when life is good? What about when life is not? Do we give God an "atta boy!" when life is easy? Do we blame God with "how could you!?" when life is hard?
How holy is God? How perfectly good is he? How deserving or undeserving of our complete trust is he?
Are we able to rejoice in God's character and will no matter what? If you're anything like me then...maybe? It is a difficult struggle, to untether or faith from the details of each and every circumstance in our life. But if we don't struggle, if we don't fight our very self to trust God on his terms, then unlike Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we won't be fearlessly trusting, but instead fearfully doubting, our hearts and minds tossed about like a beach ball in a hurricane, lost.
Instead, let's put our faith in who God actually is, not what we think he ought to do. Grounding our faith in who God is will hold us steady, stable, immovable despite the harsh realities of living as broken people in a broken, ever-shifting world. And do not bow to anyone or anything or anyone but God! Whether it be a Babylonian King or some other created thing.
Do we daily, practically, functionally trust God enough to disconnect our faith in him from how we think he ought to treat us?
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