Even If He Does Not ...

God's timing is amusing, to say the least. Yesterday I was complaining about being on a diet of manna, about not experiencing the luxuries of yesterday nor tomorrow and today God drops these verses in my lap.

Daniel 3: 17-18, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O kind, that we will not serve your gods of worship the image of gold you have set up."


The kind of grumbling I was indulging myself in yesterday tends to be the by-product of a particularly dangerous line of thinking. It stems from permitting myself to muse that God is either incapable or unwilling to address the hurts in my life. It's dangerous because permitting that line of thinking to permeate my consciousness leads to an erosion of my faith. It leads to me taking my life out of God's hands and seeking to take care of myself. It leads to me feeling sorry for myself and angry at God. All in all not a healthy situation.

So with that backdrop I walk into church this morning. A wonderful mindset to begin worshiping God with. Well not really, but better to start worshiping God when I'm there than anything else I might do. The sermon begins with the reading of the passage in Daniel, chapter 3: 1 - 18. We reach verses 17 and 18 and God draws me up short. 

Here we have three men about to be thrown into a furnace and their response is utterly astounding. "God is able ... and He will ... But even if He does not ..."  The truth they have locked into their mindset is absolutely astonishing. Do they fall in a defeated mass beseeching Almighty God to spare them from the fate about to befall them? Not for a minute. They boldly confess the truth. "The God we serve is able to save us", truth number one. "He will rescue us from your hand", truth number two. 

Then comes the keystone of this passage, the part which drew me up short. "But even if He does not ...", even if He does not do what we know He is capable of, even if He does not do what we have every confidence He will do. That's an awfully big "but". Even if God doesn't act in the way we know He is able and in the way we have every confidence He will, we will not take matters into our own hands in an attempt to save our lives. These men had put their confidence in God to such a degree that even the prospect of death in a fiery furnace could not shake that confidence. Rather they told the king, the one who was about to throw them into the furnace that even if God didn't intervene, as they were certain He would, they still would chose to place their allegiance wholly with Him. 

That is where I want to live. Daily, hour by hour, each minute of the day ... to be so confident in my God, in His love for me, His plans for me, His purposes for me, that my response to each circumstance I encounter is; My God can, my God will, but even if He does not, I will place my confidence in Him and in Him alone!