Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Thank you so much. Hey, Church, how you doing?
[00:00:06] Good. That sounded a little weak. Not gonna lie.
[00:00:11] Update. My dad is doing great. He got some teeth pulled. He's healing fine. He'll be here next week. And give God the glory, you know.
[00:00:23] Let's pray.
[00:00:27] I will never grow tired, Father, of telling you that you are worthy.
[00:00:34] You are mighty in every way. And today I pray, Father, that it's less of me and more of you.
[00:00:42] Will you make us different?
[00:00:48] Can you build us in the kind of way that we withstand the fire and the trials of life where we get to be connected to you and our character grows? And we have a community that strengthens us, Father. And will your name be glorified in us and through us? In your son's name we pray. Amen.
[00:01:08] Okay, there is this cool phenomenon that has happened in a couple of different seasons where these natural disasters have occurred. I first saw this when I was preaching at CC midweek a couple months ago and I did a sermon and I found this house that had been hit. A hurricane. It was Hurricane Ike. It had come through. And can you pop the picture up? And it was. Everything was devastated except for this last house standing is what they called it. And I was in awe of this picture. It almost looks photoshopped, right?
[00:01:51] And then in the Maui fires, there was the exact same thing where the whole street neighborhood was burned. And this house, it's still white, you know what I'm saying? It's not even darkened by smoke. It's still. It was untouched. And now in the LA fires, there is another house. And the article popped up and it said, this house is built different.
[00:02:21] And as I look at these pictures of these houses that have withstood these disasters, have withstood fire and water and all the things that have come their way, the question is, well, how are they built different? You know, how are they built different?
[00:02:39] And it turns out that these houses that withstood the fire, their roof is made of metal. They don't have a lot of the.
[00:02:53] What is. Guys, my mind is so dead today. It's so bad. I woke up, we're in the nest. I Woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning and my house had a funny smell. And I was like, this isn't part of my sermon, by the way, but it actually could relate later. So we'll see. I also struggle with add. So, okay, so I wake up, the house smells. But like years ago when I got Covid, my smell never came back normal. So nothing really smells like it should smell to Me. So I didn't know what I was smelling except that it was making me nauseous. And I heard my son up, and he's like a crazy workout guy. And so I was like, he's making something. He's making some beef or something. So at 6:00 in the morning, the smell is so atrocious. I, like, I have to get out of bed. My entire downstairs is filled with smoke. My son is asleep on the couch.
[00:03:46] I'm so throwing him under the bus right now. Oh, don't tell him I told you.
[00:03:52] And he put a pizza in the oven and let it cook all night long. So when I took the pizza out, it was literally like black, charred dust. Okay. So that's how I started my morning.
[00:04:04] Lex is over at our other campus with my husband Jake. Lex is actually preaching because all of West Campus, the whole entire staff is so it feels like one of those mornings where you're, like, scattered and everywhere. So. Jesus, fill me. Okay.
[00:04:19] The brush around the house, like, the shrubbery and stuff around the house, they didn't have it. They just put stone around the house. So these houses that aren't burning, they're kind of made to be prepared for fire. So their fences are metal. There's no shrubbery or grass. It's thin. The house is. The roof is made different. And so it's like they're built different on purpose.
[00:04:47] And something in my heart wants to be built different.
[00:04:53] Something in my heart wants to be able to withstand the trials of life.
[00:04:58] I was reading some statistics on worry and anxiety, and over 40 million adults right now struggle with an actual anxiety disorder.
[00:05:13] And what I've realized the older I get is if you love or care about something, the natural part of that is worry. It's like a side effect that goes with it. Women. Unfortunately, we are twice two times more likely to struggle with worry and anxiety disorders.
[00:05:33] But I believe it's a truth for all of us that there is pieces of us that worry. And I believe it robs us from the life that God intended for us.
[00:05:45] And when I think about being built different, I think about these real struggles that we have where our mind gets lost in deep worry, where we worry about the things and the people that we love.
[00:06:02] And I was fascinated with Dad's sermon last week because the Book of Daniel is possibly the coolest book in the entire Bible. It is so incredibly fascinating, and I learned so much stuff this week, and I'm gonna nerd out with you today. Okay. Because it is so incredibly powerful. The book of Daniel. When you go. One of the best things you can do when you're trying to understand Scripture is to buy a study Bible. So most of you might have a study Bible if you don't go buy one. If you're new to scripture and you're trying to read it maybe for the first time, I recommend an NLT version of the study Bible because what happens is at the beginning of each of the books, they give you when it was written, who wrote it, what was the context. And context is everything.
[00:06:59] We often pick up the Bible and we're like, this doesn't make sense. It's weird. It's hard. I don't really understand what it means. And it's like we're trying to put our context of living in the US and we're trying to read it. Now, listen, the ideas of the Bible are for all times and all people, but there is a context that you have to understand how and when it was written so that you can really fully understand the ideas that you're trying to get out of the Bible. Okay, so in the Book of Daniel, the main character is obviously Daniel, but he's got three friends, and it's Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. And we know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That's how I learned them as kids. But these four main characters of this book, they grew up in a context. These men, they were young boys, but they were built different. You read the Book of Daniel, and I think too often I read it as, like, I knew it from being a kid. Like, there's songs that go with it. It's the fiery furnace and it's the lion's den. And there's, like, things that it's like, awesome stories for being a kid. But then my mind as an adult thinks about it as my mind as a kid did. And when I go back and I read the context to understand how were main characters built different?
[00:08:29] What led them to such bold, courageous faith?
[00:08:34] Talk about the opportunity to worry yourself sick. These men, they grew up with thing after thing after thing. To literally, it would make most of us fold.
[00:08:47] But yet they lived with this courage.
[00:08:52] And before there was, like, outright bold courage, there were these things that today I'm going to call quiet courage.
[00:09:02] And they were built different.
[00:09:06] And in these moments where most of us would worry, they chose a quiet courage.
[00:09:14] Now I have a definition of quiet courage. Could we pop that up? Because here's what I believe quiet courage is, as I was thinking about it, it's the quiet. Okay? So it's the private. It's the pieces that not everybody knows about.
[00:09:29] It's internal. Because a lot of our worry, where do we struggle with it? Our mind, right? So it's the private and internal. It's the mental and moral strength to overcome, to persevere.
[00:09:45] So these guys, they would have these private moments of just moral and mental strength where they did not bend, they did not conform, they did not melt under the pressure, but they stood firm for what they believed. And where they could have worried, they chose this quiet courage.
[00:10:08] And I want this for us. I want us to have, like, red flags that as we worry, I want it to be our cue for quiet courage. Because what we're gonna learn today is quiet courage always leads to bold faith filled courage.
[00:10:27] Courage is like a muscle. So the more you swim, the better swimmer you become. The more you run, the better runner you become. The more you courage or the more you have courage, the more courage you will have, the better courager you become. How do you like that for grammar? Tay's gonna be a grammar teacher, and you can teach me all your ways later on, honey. Okay? So I wanna go through these moments that these men chose quiet courage and show you how it led to bold faith so that we can learn some of the lessons from it. Deal?
[00:11:04] Deal. Okay. I need you today. I smell like a furnace.
[00:11:09] I smell like pizza.
[00:11:12] Okay, so in the Book of Daniel, you.
[00:11:18] One of the coolest things I learned today is the context of where Daniel came from. You don't get any of the actual context when you open the Book of Daniel. It starts with these four young men being taken captive.
[00:11:35] But I. I was wondering, well, what happened before they took captive? Like what. Where did. Where were they growing up? And what was happening in their time and their day? And now here is the coolest thing I learned all week. Josiah. If you look in the Book of Kings and Chronicles, you will see that in when Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were growing up, their king would have been Josiah. Now, it might not mean much to you, because it took me a little bit. So their king was Josiah.
[00:12:12] Josiah was a king who became king at 8 years old. And all through kings and Chronicles, you're gonna see how there were these great kings and crappy kings and great kings and find they were good. They were kind of bad kings. But over and over, more often than not, there were bad kings who did not honor God. But when Josiah became king as a young man, he wanted to honor God.
[00:12:40] And they started doing some renovations on the temple. And in Josiah's time, when they were doing renovations, they found these lost scrolls. It was the lost. The Bible. It had been lost.
[00:12:54] And Josiah had the high priest read it. And he was so convicted and so torn apart because the people had gotten so far from God.
[00:13:07] When they read the Bible, they realized how incredibly bad it had gotten.
[00:13:14] And Josiah was a king of courage. He was so young. I think he must have been like 18 years old. Somewhere between 18 or 20, 26, he did this giant reform. And it was this revival of the community where all the false gods that had been worshiped, Josiah tore it down. And, guys, we're talking about really, really bad, bad things. There's a God called Molech who. He would. The people would sacrifice their children to honor this God. And that was going on. And Josiah is sick to his stomach. And he's young, but he's full of courage. And he's saying, we are going to fight, follow God, heart and soul.
[00:14:01] We are gonna be a community that follows him, that loves him, that serves him.
[00:14:08] And Josiah changed everything.
[00:14:12] Now what's cool to me is Daniel Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They would have been born in this time of deep revival.
[00:14:24] They would have been born in this time where there was a king and a leader who loved God, who served him faithfully.
[00:14:31] Their parents most likely served God faithfully. And it brought these young men up, and they were built just a little bit different.
[00:14:43] The first thing I want to say today is to be people of quiet courage. We have to be part of a community.
[00:14:53] We have to be part of a community. And not just any community, but a community of courage.
[00:15:00] When I think about this church in my life, even before I ever worked here, it changed my life forever.
[00:15:09] My favorite part about this church is you do not have to be anything but yourself.
[00:15:15] You don't have to come and put a mask on and show up. That's my favorite part about our leadership and our team. Nobody pretends to be anything that they're not. We're rowdy, we're rambunctious. Our church is not for everybody. You know what I'm saying? But here's what I'm saying. When you live an authentic life with God, you do not have to pretend to be perfect. But what you get to do is you get to live an authentic life in a community of people that know you, in a fintech community where people care for you.
[00:15:49] When I was in my teens growing up, my best friends, we would vacation Together. And by vacation we like went camping, you know what I'm saying? And we would go to the campgrounds. And they were friends from the church. In my 20s, when you're trying to figure it all out, we started this 20 something ministry and Chet was the leader and he preached there. And my lifelong friends have come from. It was called daxa. My lifelong friends have come from there. When my children were born, the best part about this church was they came alongside my kids.
[00:16:26] You hear what I'm saying? They came alongside of my kids and they encouraged them, they built them up. They saw in them what maybe they couldn't even see in themselves. I think all of my kids came to Christ in this building, in this place. And it's because men and women came together in an authentic faith that said, I love God, I am not perfect, but I want to give my life in service to something bigger and to something better.
[00:16:58] Church today, it's Better Together Sunday.
[00:17:01] The idea is that we are honestly, truly better together.
[00:17:07] That there are pieces and parts of this church that they cannot be anything without you.
[00:17:13] That God has gifted you, that he's given you talents and ideas and that he wants you to use them to make a difference in this place, in the world.
[00:17:25] I think about the people who are watching online. Like this would not even be available to them if it wasn't for you guys. It wouldn't be available for the people to watch online without our crew in the back and our crew where you can't even see them.
[00:17:43] My friend Jody was on camera FaceTiming the kids from Uganda this morning. And they're singing and they're worshiping and Jody's over there worshiping with them. And I just think it wouldn't be possible to love them and serve them without a church like you.
[00:17:59] God wants us to have this courage and this faith to say yes to him.
[00:18:05] This courage and this faith to build a community that is authentic and real, that has the courage to fight against what the world has to offer, that has the courage to stand up for something much more beautiful and lasting.
[00:18:25] And so when we think of quiet courage, I'm telling you, it starts with a community of courage.
[00:18:34] And today after church, there's gonna be opportunities for you to sign up. Rachel was talking to you about our night to shine. We need something like 70 people to partner with our buddy with the kids.
[00:18:49] It's one night.
[00:18:51] If you've never served before, that'd probably be an awesome place to start.
[00:18:57] And then when I think about these guys and we get to The Book of Daniel. You see that? Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they were taken captive. Josiah was king for like 31 years. And then another king came. That was bad.
[00:19:15] And Babylon came and invaded. So the boys, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, they would have been, some scholars believe, as young as 14.
[00:19:26] And when Babylon came, you heard dad talk about it last week, they took the boys from the royal families and the brightest and the best looking and the ones who had a future. And the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, he took them and he wanted to indoctrinate them. He wanted to, for three years, have these kids learn everything they could about Babylon. They taught their literature, their language, their customs. When the boys came, they changed all of their names and they started feeding them the food that the king was eating. And everyone kind of fell into line except Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
[00:20:17] They got there and their names were taken. Their home was taken.
[00:20:29] But something deep inside of them said, you will not take my identity.
[00:20:34] You can take my name, you can take my home. I have no choice. I am here right now. But you will not take my true identity in Jesus Christ.
[00:20:46] And when the king served them this food, some scholars believe the boys rejected it and asked that they could just eat veggies and water because it was Jewish law that you had to eat in a certain way.
[00:21:02] It doesn't all totally line up, though, because the boys also rejected wine, which wasn't part of the law. So other scholars, and I like this picture, believed that when the boys got there, their names were changed, their home was taken away, they're brought into the king's court that they decided that they were going to set up one boundary, and this boundary of what they ate and didn't eat, it would remind them of who they were.
[00:21:33] It would remind them that they were not Babylonians. As much as they wanted to be, as much as Nebuchadnezzar wanted to indoctrinate them, they held fast and they held firm. And every time they ate food, it was a reminder that we are men of character in God.
[00:21:58] And they didn't make a big deal out of this. Sometimes I feel like as Christians, we can make such ugly deals and you can make people so turned off by God by being so loud and obnoxious.
[00:22:12] And these young men, they did this privately. They said, will you just test us? Will you just bring us the vegetables and water and will you just test us? Because the man who was in charge of them was afraid of the king. Dad told you last week that Nebuchadnezzar was not a good dude. He was bad to the bone, and you didn't want to mess with him.
[00:22:32] And they said just privately, they didn't make a big deal out of it. Just privately. It was quiet courage, because quiet courage takes character.
[00:22:46] And in the court of Josiah, they would have learned that what is most important, where true power comes from is in your character.
[00:22:58] And these guys, they lived this faith in Jesus Christ that even though society was trying to turn them into something, they stayed firm in the character and the roots of how they were raised.
[00:23:18] It's not hard for me to look at my life and say that character is probably one of the easiest things to let slip.
[00:23:33] Character is one of those things that we can publicly show the world something, but privately, we know we're not all that.
[00:23:48] And as I was thinking about, like, ways that our character can be shown, it's often when we practice integrity in the private, in the quiet, that we choose courage.
[00:24:03] Like, some of you travel and it's what's happening in the hotel room at night.
[00:24:09] You have access, but it's what do you choose to live out.
[00:24:19] Some of us at business, we can fib things, and you can. I remember working at Altel when I was really young. It was a cell phone company, and you got commission based on what anyone would sign up for. And everyone that was successful would put all these things on the phone bills of their customers and just not tell them about it. And it was dishonest, but their commissions were huge.
[00:24:47] And I remember, like, okay, that's an option. I could do that. But I remember thinking to the core of who I was, that's not who you are.
[00:24:56] And when we have opportunities in business to maybe get ahead or maybe pull ahead, but you're not living inside of the character of who you know that you're called to be. It takes quiet courage.
[00:25:12] It takes courage to say that I am a woman of integrity. I am a man of integrity, and I choose to follow God heart and soul.
[00:25:21] Because what I've learned along the way is when you choose God, heart and soul, he will always put you exactly where you need to be. He will always provide. He will always take care of you.
[00:25:33] And so it's not always outright bold. I'm gonna tell everyone about this.
[00:25:39] It is. It's quiet in the heart that you've decided who you are going to be, that you are a person of character and it matters to you.
[00:25:55] And it's in the little moments that you say yes to God and no to maybe the desire, no to the check, no to whatever party's happening. If you're in college and you just quietly choose God.
[00:26:16] Because what happens in these men's life was it wasn't just this one big thing that they did. It was their choice time and time and time again.
[00:26:27] If you're anything like me, you're going to get it wrong sometimes.
[00:26:31] And maybe your character doesn't feel so great, but here's the beauty about our God is he is not afraid of that. It's in fact, why he sent Jesus Christ.
[00:26:42] He knew us. He knew our human nature. I'm reading this book. It's called I'm so Bad at Titles and Authors, but it's by Brother Lawrence, and he was a monk. And he said, of course I'm going to sin. It's my nature. And the sooner I get comfortable with the fact that I am a sinner, that's what I'm gonna do, the less I live in the shame of being that. It's what we were born into. But he said he would redirect himself to Jesus Christ. He would redirect himself to God. So character is a thing that we build upon. It's like, I'm gonna practice these moments. And even when you get it wrong, get it wrong once, don't keep going.
[00:27:25] I heard a pastor say, if you do it, if you skip it one day, he was talking about Bible reading, Don't skip it the next day. I say, if you skip it for a week or a month, don't skip it for two. You know what I'm saying?
[00:27:38] Like, there's practice in this, that it builds and it builds. And quietly and privately, I'm living up to who I want to be. I'm surrounded in a community who sees what's best in me, who encourages me, who. Who I get to serve and be a part of. I'm choosing time and time again for this quiet moments of courage that no one knows so that I can build my character.
[00:28:02] And then last week, dad talked about this dream that the King had, and he had this wild dream that he told all the wise men. I want you to one, tell me the dream, and then tell me what it means. It was an unrealistic expectation. No one could have done that.
[00:28:19] But Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they trusted in God.
[00:28:26] And Daniel found this out, and he went to his three friends. If you missed the sermon, awesome. Go back and listen to it.
[00:28:33] And Daniel says, let's pray.
[00:28:36] And let's pray for God's mercy.
[00:28:39] And let's pray that God will have mercy on us and that he will give us the exact details of the dream so that Nebuchadnezzar will spare our lives.
[00:28:50] Quiet courage takes communication.
[00:28:58] I think so often in our life, vulnerability, it's not good. Like, it's uncomfortable, it feels miserable. You don't want to do it. And so we hide. We hide behind the masks. We hide behind, you know, looking good, looking, the bravado. But at the end of the day, when Daniel found out what was happening, he went to his trusted three friends.
[00:29:23] Do you have trusted people in your life that you can seek God with quietly and privately?
[00:29:34] How easy would it be to worry yourself sick about an insane expectation?
[00:29:45] But Daniel turned to his best friends, his best friends of character, and he was vulnerable with them. And they prayed and they sought God privately.
[00:30:00] And in those private moments, God showed up publicly.
[00:30:07] I don't know how many times I have sat right where you guys are sitting, and I have prayed for this church.
[00:30:12] How many times I've come across each seat and just prayed. I don't know who's gonna sit here, Father, but you do. Will you fill them? Will you show them who you are? Will you give them a strength and a courage that they don't even know?
[00:30:27] I privately seek God for you. I had two girlfriends at. In my 20s. I would call, and we would just. We would be vulnerable, and we would share everything, and they knew everything about me, even the stuff I wanted no one to know. And we'd pray, and we would seek God together. In those moments, it's these moments of choosing to seek people instead of covering up.
[00:30:54] It's quiet courage that is communicating to God specifically.
[00:30:59] I think it was my daughter Taylor who told me, like, pray specifically. Cause then you get to go back and you get to see the specific answers that God answered, Isn't she awesome? She had a journal, and she would keep the journal, and she would go back and she would be able to say, look at what God did. Look at what I asked for, and now look at where I'm at. And I generally pray a lot. And that switched my mind to say, okay, I want to be more specific. I want to be able to praise God specifically. Specifically. And so, like, be specific in your prayers. Not because God needs it, because I think we need it.
[00:31:37] There's not a right or a wrong way. You know what I'm saying? But this is for you.
[00:31:42] This is for you to see how God shows up.
[00:31:46] And now these three men have faithfully followed God with this quiet courage.
[00:31:54] And now in chapter three of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, he had the dream of the giant statue. Now he decided to build a statue. And it was something, I think the measurements are like 90ft tall by 9ft wide or something. I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's close. It's a giant image. Some scholars think it was of himself.
[00:32:21] Other scholars believe that it was an image that really was meant to represent the gods of Babylon.
[00:32:28] And now he has built this giant golden image.
[00:32:34] And a decree goes out that if you hear the music playing, you must bow down to the image. And if you don't bow down, you will be thrown into a fiery furnace.
[00:32:49] I love the idea of artifacts from the Bible and, like, what would this fiery furnace have been like?
[00:32:56] And so in my research, they found some artifacts from Nebuchadnezzar's time in his kingdom. And he used fire burned bricks. So oftentimes they would build bricks out of letting clay dry in the sun. But they weren't very sturdy, they weren't very strong. And so he found that a kiln would heat up these bricks and make them much more durable. And Nebuchadnezzar was about him and his kingdom and what looked good and what would last and his name. And so they believe that the fiery furnace from the best of my studying would most likely have been a kiln.
[00:33:40] But they weren't like what you expect. It's not like a little potter's kiln. They were actual, like, buildings. They would have been huge, and they would have had a hole in the top where the smoke would come out, and then there'd be a big opening with the door on it. And so when I picture this fiery furnace, I never knew how to put it in my head. Like, I never knew how to really see it because I was a little, little girl. Just like three men in the fire, you know, they would put it up on the board and you'd be like, ah.
[00:34:10] So it looks more like a brick building with a giant door that would be arched and a hole in the top that smoke could come out of. So the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they get word that this is what's happening.
[00:34:29] But you remember, they've already decided that their identity was in their one true God.
[00:34:35] They already decided that their character is where their true strength and power came from.
[00:34:42] They decided that they were going to lean on each other and they were going to Seek God with all of their heart. And so when the instruments played, they had no interest of bowing down.
[00:34:59] But some of the other wise men were pretty jealous of them.
[00:35:03] The king had lifted them in power, so they ruled a lot of the areas.
[00:35:08] And the other wise men noticed they didn't bow down. So the first thing they did was go call them out.
[00:35:18] I have a side note, but I'm going to skip it. Like, mind your own business, you know what I'm saying?
[00:35:26] So they go to the king. They let him know that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the leaders of the provinces that he put them in charge of, aren't bowing to this God.
[00:35:36] And Nebuchadnezzar calls them in and he gives them an opportunity.
[00:35:42] When the music plays, you can bow or you're going to be thrown into the furnace.
[00:35:47] And what the boys say, it wrecks me in the best possible way.
[00:35:58] We're going to start at 3:17.
[00:36:01] 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.
[00:36:14] 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.
[00:36:26] Quiet courage, quiet faith. Where you're seeking God, where you're trusting in him, where you're choosing the right things over and over and over, it burns within you.
[00:36:37] You get to know God so personally and so intimately, you can't help but to love Him.
[00:36:44] And then when opportunities come, you trust him so much that it is not your agenda, it's not your will.
[00:36:56] You see these young men, they trusted God so much that they were saying, I know who he is. I know he can save us, and I believe he will.
[00:37:06] But I want to be really clear. Even if he doesn't, even if what I want doesn't happen, we will not bow to you. Because God is God.
[00:37:21] God is king.
[00:37:23] And I think what a lot of us Christians want is our agenda with God's power. Can I get an amen? You know what I'm saying? Give me God's power with Sarah's agenda, and we are going to get to work. You know, but that is not letting God be God, that's letting Sarah be God.
[00:37:44] And I think what the call of this is is that we have a history with God that builds us into the kind of faith when the things that happen in our life that we do not want, the things that happen in our life that we do not desire, that we seek and we trust God. And so then we say, okay, it is God's will. It's not mine.
[00:38:10] It is God's plan, and I'm trusting in it.
[00:38:15] It's not mine.
[00:38:19] And then the unthinkable happened.
[00:38:22] Nebuchadnezzar was like, well, we'll see who your God is.
[00:38:26] He heated up the kiln to, like, way hotter than it should be. They opened the door, and just from the blast of heat, the men died.
[00:38:34] The people who opened the door died.
[00:38:38] And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in.
[00:38:48] And it's easy to miss this because we don't often see this in our life.
[00:39:00] We don't see it like this.
[00:39:05] But God did not save them from the fire.
[00:39:12] The king looks in this opening, and he says, what's going on?
[00:39:17] He said, I see four men unbound with, walking in the midst of the fire, and they're not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like the son of God, the king, Nebuchadnezzar. He looks in, he says, okay, I see three men.
[00:39:34] Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But there's someone else who has the appearance of God. And scholars believe that this is what we call a christophany.
[00:39:43] The idea that we know God is the Trinity. It is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they've always existed from the beginning.
[00:39:54] And even in the Old Testament, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are in the fiery furnace, what they believe that fourth person was, was Christ.
[00:40:05] They believe that it was Jesus Christ, the fourth man in the fire, the living, breathing Son of God Almighty.
[00:40:15] He did not deliver them from the fire, but in it church, in it, Christ showed up.
[00:40:27] I heard a pastor ask the question. He said, you know, in John, you see that they called Jesus the Word in the beginning was the word of God.
[00:40:37] And if this is Jesus in this fiery furnace with these three men protecting them, walking with them, standing with them, he said, I wonder what the Word said.
[00:40:51] This is not in scripture. We have no idea if they talked. We have no idea.
[00:40:57] But I like to think about it.
[00:41:01] I like to think about Jesus Christ in the fire with these men. And I wonder what he would say.
[00:41:10] Like, I wonder if he said, you have no idea how proud your father is of you right now.
[00:41:17] I wonder if he said, your courage and your faith, it's changing the king's life right now as we speak.
[00:41:32] We might not be protected from whatever trial and fire there is in life, but here's what I promise you with all my heart and all my soul that Jesus Christ walks in the trials of life with you.
[00:41:49] And that when you live with quiet courage and you choose a community of courage and you choose to serve faithfully, when you choose to live like him and be more and more conformed into the character of Jesus Christ, when you communicate with others and you're vulnerable and you trust in God in the kind of way you have a heavenly Father who looks at you and says, I am proud of you. Well done, good and faithful servant.
[00:42:17] You have a loving Father who shows up in the midst of every trial and he carries you through. He does not leave you alone, but he surrounds you and Church, whatever trial you are in, whatever trial you might be going to, or whatever trial you have come out of, here's what I want you to know. There is another in the fire, and he loves you.
[00:42:42] And when we let our worry slip into these practices and let him cue us up for courage, and we trust in him and we choose courage again and again and again, God sees it.
[00:43:02] God's built you different.
[00:43:08] We can't go back in time and change. But moving forward, we can become the men and women that he has called us to be.
[00:43:17] We can witness the Christophany of our own lives where God shows up and Christ encourages us, he lifts us up, and he helps us to become the men and women that he has designed us to be. Church, you are built different.
[00:43:34] Now go live like it. Amen.
[00:43:39] Dear Heavenly Father, I love you. I trust in you. And I so badly desire for my life to be an act of quiet courage where it's not for everyone to see, Father, but it's for you and I.
[00:43:56] And then in those moments where you put us, Father, I pray that we boldly can proclaim, we boldly can walk, we boldly can trust that even in the fire our faith does not quit, that we say, we trust you, even if, Father.
[00:44:15] And if you don't come through, I still trust you. Because you are God of providence and you have a plan, and you are sovereign and you are good.
[00:44:24] I pray for every heart that needs you. Will you meet them? Will you call them by name? Will you strengthen and fortify them, Father, so that their life can be different?
[00:44:37] Can you build them differently?
[00:44:40] In your mighty Son's name we pray. Amen.
