Even if

If you have professed that your faith is in Jesus Christ, how committed are you? How much do you trust him? If your like me you want to say to the death! But I have yet to be put to the test. I often fail to trust him even for the little things. In the book of Daniel in chapter three the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is given. They were young Jewish boys living in exile under king Nebuchadnezzer. He had put them in charge of some of his business because they were trustworthy. They put their trust in the one true and living God. The king set up a huge statue and sent word out throughout all the nations under his control that when they heard certain music they were to bow to this statue and worship the kings gods. The three young men didn’t bow. Some tattle tales told the king ,all too eager to see them executed ,about them refusing to obey such an order so the king was angry with them. He gave them one more chance to bow or they would be thrown into a furnace and be burned to death. They told the king that they would not bow to any other Gods but only the one true God and that he could and would save them. Now what they said next is truly amazing. Are you ready? They told the king, even if God doesn’t save us from the fire we still will not bow!! Can you imagine!! You see they knew that life was so much more than the here and now. If God did save them from the fire great but if he didn’t they would be saved from eternal fire in hell. So either way they were going to be okay!! That is true faith. That is belief tested and approved. They had no way of knowing if God would rescue them from the immediate danger. They only knew that he would from the eternal. Well the king had them bound up and the fire heated to 7 times it’s normal. He ordered the strongest soldiers to throw them in. It killed the soldiers but the boys were okay. The king sees them in the fire but there was a fourth person in there with them. The Lord was with them in the fire. They were walking around just fine. The king calls them out and do you know that they didn’t even smell like smoke!! Their hair wasn’t singed or clothes burned but the ropes they were bound with had burned off without harming them!! The king was amazed by their God, the one true God and his great power to save!! You and I may never be faced with such a thing and I hope we don’t but I often don’t even trust God like I should with the little things! Would you join me in praying for each other to have faith in Jesus like these boys did? Can you imagine if our faith was even in just the little things how much impact it could have on those around us like it had on King Nebuchadnezzer? Dear Lord, help us who have claimed to know you and trust in you to be able to live up to our claims. Help our lives to be proof of your saving power and evident to all those around us!!