The Fire Is Good

Someone once looked deeply into my heart and proclaimed, “The fire is good!” At the time I couldn’t really appreciate the full truth of that simple statement. However, now many years later, I am beginning to appreciate how wonderful the fire really can be in God’s hands. You will be hated by all for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives. (Luke 21:17-19 ESV) Robert Murray McCheyne, wrote: “Every wise workman takes his tools away from the work from time to time that they may be ground and sharpened; so does the only-wise Jehovah take his ministers oftentimes away into darkness and loneliness and trouble, that he may sharpen and prepare them for harder work in his service.” For every child of God there is a time of “sharpening.” It is a work of love and grace, not hate and punishment. In this work of grace I have discovered a few principles. Perhaps they will be of help in your walk through the fire as well. First, for Christians, there is always hope and joy beyond the suffering. Even when the source of our suffering is the vicious attack of the devil in his relentless effort to rob us of our joy and peace, we are not left alone and without hope. Jesus very matter-of-factly declares in today’s verse, “everyone will hate you because you are mine.” Take hope in being His! Second, God does not expect us to enjoy suffering. We do not sit under the sadistic eye of some cosmic ogre who takes delight in the hurt of his subjects. We are cradled in the palm of a gracious, loving Father. His promise is very clear: “not a hair of your head will perish.” He does not expect us to enjoy the pain of suffering. He asks us to trust Him through the pain, knowing that we will become stronger, wiser, and better through it. Someone has said, “Crosses are ladders that lead to heaven.” Ted Engstrom said, “Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down in infantile paralysis, and he becomes Franklin Roosevelt. Deafen him, and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Marian Anderson, a George Washington Carver. . . . Call him a slow learner; “retarded,” and write him off an uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.” The fire IS good!