Is God Worth Following? Eternal Life Doesn’t Suck!
Today as I made my way though Daniel I got to read my favorite of all Bible stories, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the Firey Furnace.” I don’t know why it is my favorite. Maybe it’s because I think the name Shadrach is the coolest name in the Bible and way better than his Hebrew name of Hananiah. Maybe it’s because even after they are given prominent roles in the governemnt of Nebuchadnezzar they still stand against the ungodliness. Maybe it’s because they do it without fear of losing their job and losing their life overcoming their fear of God. Maybe it’s because God saves them, and appears with them in the furnace. Or maybe it’s because of Daniel 3:18, “ But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
I often wonder if we have crossed a significant line over the years as we have tried to make Christianity palatable. We try to convince people that there is something in it for them if they would just pray this prayer and get dunked in this giant bathtub. We preach sermons about how God can fix your marriage, your kids, your finances, and your health and we fail to proclaim with the same vigor that He’s still worth following even if our wife still decides to leave us, our kids still choose to disobey us, we still end up bankrupt, and we still get cancer.
I have a friend, much older than I, who asked me a question as he was obviously dealing with the same thing. He said, “Robert, would you follow Jesus even if it meant that you would go to Hell?”
What a great question. I’m haunted by that question every day, because when he asked it I had to really check myself and I had to deeply deal with just how selfish I was in my own personal walk and in how I was communicating the gospel to others.
My answer today is, “I think so. I mean, I would try to. It would depend upon how connected I am to what it was He actually has done for me. The more connected I am to His suffering, the more likely I will be to suffer for Him” If I learned anything from Peter on the night Jesus was betrayed it was that I am never sure until the opportunity arrises.
I’m not sure how hot Hell is, but it can’t get much hotter than that furnace in Daniel 3.
And those three guys went.
May my faith in the little things of today prove beneficial when the furnace comes for me, and for you.
Is God worth following? I hope so. And this hope comes from a place deep inside of me, that just showed up one day when God through His crushing grace saved me.
Addendum:
Daniel 3 also raises a question I’ll have to ask when I see Jesus face to face: “Where in the heck was Daniel in all of this? Was he unaware of what was going down? Did he try to stick up for his friends? Did he choose to worship the statue? He’s conspicuously absent…
Always seeing something I didn’t see before…Dreaming
I don’t put a whole lot of stock in my dreams, meaning the ones I have when I am sleeping and not the ones I have during my waking hours. I typically don’t remember my dreams, but there have been a few times where my dreams have awoken me in the middle of the night. Some of them were pretty vivid and many of them have dealt with losing someone I loved or being involved in some kind of struggle with evil.
For some reason I have never been inclined to determine the interpretation of any of those dreams. I typically just shrug them off as…well…as a dream. It’s not real so it must not be significant. However, dreaming in the Bible has a whole other perspective. Dreams are given some pretty serious ink in scripture.
One dream I can remember learning in Sunday School and I have read before on more than one occasion is the dream that King Nebuchadnezzar has in Daniel 2, which I read today. It may seem amazing, but the more I study scripture the more I realize how little I really know, but I don’t think I knew that Daniel not only had to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, but he had to tell King Nebi what he had dreamed. Nebuchadnezzar put so much stock into this dream, and most likely was so afraid of what it meant that he wanted to make sure that it’s interpretation was spot on. What better way to do that then to ask all of your “wisemen” to tell you what the dream was? I mean if they had a connection to a supernatural power that could interpret the dream, then telling the “wisemen” what the dream was should not be any task too hard.
Principles I learned today:
1) Life’s greatest challenges produce the greatest opportunities for faith and for earthly rewards. I’m not a health and wealth guy. In fact, my theology of the end times excludes any notion of a rapture prior to any tribulation. My reasoning is simple. If the disciples were killed, then why wouldn’t we be tortured even more. Whether cancer be the one knocking at your door or the commander of the King’s army the challenge that lies ahead will not be easy, will not guarantee freedom from other challenges, but will be an opportunity for God to be glorified, to increase our faith, and quite possibly reap some worldy benefits – especially if the king is involved.
2) Just because you’ve been asked to do the impossible doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do if you ask for help. This is a big one for me because I hate to ask for help. I don’t necessarily fail in asking for God’s help, but I fail miserably at asking for help from friends. I need to humble myself often by asking friends for help.
3) Pay attention to your dreams. I may start journaling my sleeping dreams, but maybe that was the media of the day. Maybe with technology and mass media God is communicating visually and personally through those avenues, but I think I’m going to start with the dreams and see where that takes me.
Principle reinforced
There is always going to be something you didn’t see before when it comes to scripture. So, read it…every day…year around.