Freedom Through Fire

By Grant Gaines

What do you use when you are trying to build the world’s tallest building that pierces the sky with 163 floors and stands at an impressive 2,722 feet above the ground? Steel. What do you use when you want to construct the world’s largest boat that is 1,601 feet long (150 feet longer than the Empire State Building is high), 243 feet wide, and weighs approximately 600,000 tons? Steel. And what material do you use when you want to build a tank that will protect its inhabitants from bullets, shrapnel, and the other dangers of war? Steel.

Steel is one of the strongest metals contractors currently use to build with today. Steel can withstand high winds, strong rains, and even some powerful explosions to an extent. But do you know how this powerful metal gets shaped into its correct form? Heat-lots and lots of heat. 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit of heat to be exact.

And until this powerful metal is exposed to such extreme amounts of heat, very little can be done to thwart its original, raw shape as an alloy of iron and carbon. But if a blacksmith needs to fit a piece of steel to a certain specification, all he has to do is crank the heat up and the metal that can hold up skyscrapers, carry 600,000 tons of cargo across raging seas, and withstand the wear and tear of war becomes as moldable as a piece of Play Dough. Heat doesn’t just melt steel, it allows it to be shaped into a better design.

Trials can do the same for your life. Sometimes the difficulties you are going through are the very thing that God is using to free you from an unhealthy pattern of life that is holding you captive. Sometimes it takes a fire to truly free you from your chains. This idea finds its roots in Daniel 3 where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego got firsthand experience of this lesson.

Daniel 3 is one of the beloved childhood stories that we grow up learning about in Sunday School and in our imaginations. We remember how the three teenage boys stood for the Lord while an entire nation bowed to a 90 foot idol (Daniel 3:7). We remember the confidence the boys had before the enraged King Nebuchadnezzar when they said, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from your majesty’s hand. But even if He does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18, NIV). And of course, we remember the deliverance God provided for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as He not only got them out of the fire but protected them to the point that when, “…the governors and royal advisers…saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them” (Daniel 3:27, NIV).

And while it’s true that the fire did not harm these men at all, I want to point out one thing that the fire did burn.

If we back up to Daniel 3:21-23 (NIV) we read, “So [Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego], wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace. The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.” Apparently the boys weren’t in there for too long before the on looking audience began to notice movement coming from the furnace because the very next verse picks up on the story by saying, “Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, ‘Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?’ They replied, ‘Certainly, Your Majesty.’ He said, ‘Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods'” (Daniel 3:24-25, NIV).

For my whole life, I have always focused on the fact that Jesus was with these boys in the fire protecting them from even smelling like the smoke that they were walking around in (Daniel 3:27). But the other day as I was reading this story my focus shifted as I noticed that Daniel 3:21 mentions that the men were “bound” as they were thrown in the fire and Daniel 3:23 reports that the boys were “firmly tied” as they fell into the blazing furnace.

But when you read Daniel 3:25 (NIV, bold mine), King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished because he saw, “…four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed….”

The fire that did not harm their bodies released them from their chains. Counseling, fasting, and will power couldn’t release them from their bondage-only a fire could do that.

Is it possible that the same could be said about you? Do you think it is possible that maybe, just maybe the reason you are going through this difficult time right now is because it takes a fire to free you from the bondage that Satan has in your life right now? A seven-step plan won’t do it, meetings with your accountability partner won’t suffice, and time just can’t seem to heal this wound. You need something more-you need a fire.

So don’t let the intensity of the flame intimidate you, the Blacksmith needs fire to mold the iron.

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