Going Through Fire

The other night we were at our small group at church and our friend JoAnna shared insight from the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Discussing this story got me to thinking, and being me my brain went in another direction. Haha.

As I was contemplating what it means at times to go through a fire I had a scene from the movie Pure Country pop into my head. Random right? Not really. In the scene the characters are discussing a dancing chicken that was at a carnival when they were kids. They had snuck back stage to find that as the ring master was putting the music on he was also turning up the heat on a stove beneath the stage. The heat of the stove made the chicken on the stage hop around as if it were dancing. Odd comparison I know.

This got me to thinking that sometime we go through fires in life so that we can be purified by the flames. These fires are allowed in our lives by God to grow us and to transform us. Other times we go through fires because we make bad choices. Yet other times we go through fires because we are pushed into it or refused to eliminate things (habits, thoughts, addictions, and even relationships) from our lives that God has told us to eliminate.

I think that far to often when us Christians read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we assume that every fire is from God, and every fire is one that we are supposed to go through. We must learn to recognize the source of the fire, not just assume and jump in, or allow ourselves to be pushed or dragged in.

In discerning the source of the fire, and striving to understand it's purpose in our lives, we must process through 2 things: 1) sometimes we are supposed to get out of the fire, and 2) sometimes we are supposed to go through the fire. The most important lesson is learning to know the difference, because not every fire is something God intends for us to go through. Sometimes, like that dancing chicken, we are just supposed to jump off that stage and out of the fire.

Without knowing the difference we will go through fires that we were never meant to go through. When that happens we end up getting ourselves stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and lessons, until we grow and change the cycle.

Another important lesson that I took from this was that we aren't supposed to camp out in the fire. We are to go THROUGH the fire, not stay in it. Even as unstable, disobedient, and un-persevering as Israel was in the books of the Old Testament they never set up camp and stayed in the desert. They continued to push forward and out of the fire, even if they did grumble and complain the whole way. We may not like the fire, we aren't really supposed to, but we go THROUGH it, not stay in it.