INTRODUCTION

I am fortunate to have a good many friend who know more about the Bible then I do. I am equally fortunate to have friends who regularly receive great insight from God on matters contained within the Bible. Gerald Conrad is a member of both groups and you will soon see why. With his permission, I am presenting a great message to you from him on faith in God. Take a look.

FIERY FURNACE FAITH

Over the last 35 years I’ve learned that if you ask the average professing Christian if he has faith in God the answer will usually be a resounding YES!

Yet when I listen to the way some people pray I have to wonder. How many times have you heard a prayer end with “…if it be thy will…”? I’ve often wondered upon hearing this line why the prayer was even uttered.. I, for one, have no intention of asking for anything unless I’m fairly convinced that it is the will of God to provide it.

Jesus taught us that we should pray after this manner “…thy will be done.” This is an act of submission, not an attempt to give God an “out” for unanswered prayers. When I pray I always say “…let me be an instrument of your will here on Earth…”. I know that I will not always get my way but it’s God’s perfect will and plan that matters and I am willing to submit to that will, whatever it may be without thinking that God has failed me if MY will isn’t done.

So the question arises, “Why do we pray this way?” Well, after listening to some of my teachers over the years, and hearing the way they interpret some of scriptures I have no problem seeing how a touch of unbelief has crept in.

So how do we know if an interpretation of scripture is correct? I have a couple of simple rules.

1. If your interpretation doesn’t make sense YOU made a mistake.

2. If your interpretation contradicts another part of the Bible, once again it is YOU that messed up.

Now I know that God says in Isiah that his thoughts and ways are higher than ours. (Isa 55:9) and I’m also aware of the fact that the Bible tells us that “…the foolishness of God is wiser than men…” (1 Cor 1:25) but that is in the present tense.

When I say the our interpretation has to make sense I mean in the light of what we KNOW. Let me give you an example.

One of my favorite stories is found in the book of Daniel. We have all heard of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the furnace but let’s look at it a little closer.

In this scripture we see Nebuchadnezzar make a statement to these three young men (vs 15) as to what his intentions are towards them.

When they answer the king it is interesting to note the first thing they said to him “…we are not careful to answer thee…” The word “careful” is khash-akh’ and it implies a sense of readiness, and that a reply isn’t necessary. (That must have made the king hot, just imagine these slaves telling him “we don’t even have to answer you”.)

These guys were “prayed up”. It is evident from their answer that God had made his will known to them so they told the king “If it be so…”(vs 17). Now ask yourself. “If WHAT be so?”

The answer: The kings decree or course.

So they proceed to tell the King how God will save them out of the furnace and out of his hand.

Now here comes the mistake in interpretation. The following is a direct quote from the New International Version and this is how these verses are often taught”

This doesn’t say the same thing as the KJV which says “But if not…” The NIV makes no sense, think about it…if God DOESN’T save them they will be a pile of ashes on the floor of the furnace so saying “…we will not serve your gods…” becomes a moot point. Now consider this.

When they say “But if not….” What are they talking about? Remember the subject of this conversation between them and Nebuchandnezzar was the kings decree, so DON’T CHANGE THE SUBJECT!!

They were not discussing whether or not God would save them, that was a done deal in their hearts. The question was whether or not the King was going to make good his threats.

So what they are telling him was “If what you say is so and you throw us into the furnace our God WILL save us, not only out of the fire but out of your hand, but if you’re trying to bluff us into falling down it won’t work, because even if you allow us to live there’s nothing you can do to make us pray to your gods.” Now, doesn’t that make more sense?

You see, these guys knew what faith was all about. They submitted themselves to the will of God and knew that they didn’t have to give him a “way out” should his word fail. They prayed about this way before it happened. In fact, I believe that these young men were on their knees several times a day. Remember they were one of the ones who refused to eat from the kings table and grew fat on “pulse”.

They were not “careful” to answer the king when the time came because they had ALREADY inquired of God what his will was and were convinced in their hearts that his answer was “Boys, if you don’t bow or bend I won’t let you burn.”

If you want the kind of “furnace faith” that these three men had you have to:

1. Be in prayer continually

2. Listen for the voice of God

3. Be willing to be the instrument of God’s will, even if it looks like death is about to devour you.

4. And never be influenced by what you see or hear but rather by what you KNOW. And that is, that God is faithful.

Remember we serve a God that “can not lie..” (Titus 1:2) so it isn’t necessary to make excuses for him. His way is always the perfect way. Our part is to submit to it and know that no matter what happens it is the will of God.

Upon further investigation I have come to realize that King Nebuchadnezzar couldn’t have picked a worse group to try burning up. You see, these guys were given new names when they were taken into captivity, their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. What does it matter? Names mean something.

Azariah means “He that hears the Lord”

Mishael means “who is asked for, or ‘lent’ “

Hananiah means “grace, mercy, gift of God.

Put these together and what I get is “He that hears the Lord is lent (or given) to show grace, the gift of God”

OOPS! This should have told the king something.

For us it says that if we will hear the Lord, and give ourselves over to him we will be saved from the flames (of hell) by his grace.

Ohh! I like that.

SCRIPTURE

God tells us that if we have faith, the faith the comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, and don’t doubt, then we can have what we ask for. This is the faith that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had and the kind of faith we should also strive for. Then we will see the sick healed, the blind seeing, the lame walking, the demon possessed set free and much much more as God works through us to reach people for Jesus Christ.

CONCLUSION

God really is an awesome God who honors his word and keeps his promises. We can truly stand with him and on his word all the time.

Until Next Time,

I want to thank the great guys over at My Life Ministries (http://mylifeministries.org/) for encouraging me and hosting this blog. If you haven’t done so yet, hop over to http://mylifeministries.org/ and take a look around. Join the forums and become part of the family.

Also, if you have a testimony, email it to me at testify {at} fireknights {dot} net. I would love to hear it and I may just post it here on the blog.

INTRODUCTION

The amazing God who created the universe desires to take care of our needs as declared in the scripture. This is one account where God brought his super on our natural and did something wild to provide for us.

GOD’S WAY OR MY WAY

The month of April has been a very interesting one for us. In our finances, we have some fairly big obstacles that are beyond our ability to meet within our needs. We didn’t happen into this situation overnight, but there were two distinct issues that were in the works causing a spiral downfall. These two issues were making decisions without checking fully with God and the devil coming and stealing from us. Allow me to explain further what I mean.

Back a little while ago, we had taken out a loan that seemed good at the time. This loan was a quick fix to our immediate need at the time and seemed to answer our problems. It seemed like a lifeline out of the hole we were in. However, it was not. Looks can be deceiving and this is why everything especially in finances should be taken before the Lord and let him sort out what is good and what is not. That is what we should have done, but not what we did. Instead, we jumped at this loan and were even celebrating that a way was provided out of our hole. This was the beginning of our problems.

Continuing on this same issue, when we had gotten our tax refund from the government, we also saw this as a blessing as it was larger then expected. If we had checked with God first, we would have learned the best way to spend our money. However, again, we did not. Instead we paid what seemed good to pay and brought a few extra items that we had wanted. When we finally got around to asking God what should we do, he was faithful to tell us how to proceed. The problem was that the money was gone and we were not able to follow his commands. We repented of this problem as soon as we realized what we had done, but the damage had been done and our spiraling downward issues with our financial hole were rapidly expanding.

Thrown into this mix was the devil. The Bible tells us that he comes to steal, kill and destroy, and with our finances he was able to get a three for one. Since we had not followed God’s plan for our money and we had not listened to God, we opened the door for the devil to come in and mess with our finances to a degree. The reason he did not have full reign within our money was because we were tithing and God was preventing him from being able to run a complete muck. However, even though we were tithing, we were not obedient to God and the door was open. So, the devil came in and caused some havoc. That loan that seemed like such a good idea is now costing us $600 a month to keep up with. But that is not all; we have had mysterious issues occur within our bank account to cause many overdraft charges and extra fees. In other words, the devil stole money from us and in doing so destroyed our ability to help spread the kingdom through giving and killed our witness to others. After all, who would look at our situation and say that they want what we have. The devil had a field day.

That was our problem heading into the month of April where my wife and I had gotten to a point where we had enough. We began to fast and pray and seek God. We began to look to God and follow his way instead of our own.

On one particular Friday, we had gotten down to the wire. We had been following God’s plan for our finances and trusting him to provide. On this day, we had just about run out of food. We had just dinner left in the house and no money to buy anything for the family. My wife and I got together in our bedroom and prayed. It was not a fancy prayer, but an earnest one in which we just told God that we were taking him at his word and that we would trust him, but also that we needed something to happen. We finished our prayer and waited to hear from God to go somewhere, do something or have something show up.

There we were waiting on the Lord. One of our children had gone and retrieved the mail for us. The mail itself looked like a stack of bills. Included within this stack was an envelope that declared it was from a “Payment Processing” center. I have seen these before and they are usually some sweepstakes gimmicks and not worth my time. I opened this envelope and found myself looking at a check. It was not an ordinary check as it was electronically created and mailed through an online bill pay system. In fact, it looked so different that I just sat there staring at it for about two minutes before I noticed whom the check was from. When I saw my best friend’s name, I called over my wife. Her eyes grew as big as saucers as she stared at the check. Immediately, we went to God in prayer and found our how he wanted us to spend the money and went to the bank and did just that.

What had happened, unknown to me, was that God put it on my best friend’s heart to take a certain sum of money and send it to us. My friend, being the Godly man that he is, just obeyed God. He didn’t question just obeyed and was a tremendous blessing to us. And in return, I know that God will abundantly bless him back.

We are still facing some big issued to overcome in our finances, but thanks be to God that he has a plan and will work this all out.

SCRIPTURES

God tells us in his word that he wants to prosper us.

Furthermore, he tells us that as long as we do not rob him, he will bless us. In fact, this is the only place where God tells us to actually test him on his word.

Tithing is giving God ten percent of all of our income (before taxes) or one dime off of every dollar. That is God’s money. The remaining money is our money and out of that God wants us to seek him on what offering we are to make. And the really good news there is that God blesses the offering as well as the tithe. That is what Malachi is telling us. Jesus furthers this concept in Luke.

If we tithe (giving God what is his) and offer (giving out of what is ours) God promises to bless us with supernatural abundant overflow that there will not be room enough to contain. And if that was not enough, he makes another promise for when we tithe and offer.

If we tithe and offer, following and obey what God has told us to do, he will bless us and keep the devil off of our back. How much better can this get! But this is the nature of God. Take a look.

CONCLUSION

God wants to bless you. Just obey him and he will and he even tells you to test him in this. Give it a try and see how big our God is and how great he will bless you.

Until Next Time,

I want to thank the great guys over at My Life Ministries (http://mylifeministries.org/) for encouraging me and hosting this blog. If you haven’t done so yet, hop over to http://mylifeministries.org/ and take a look around. Join the forums and become part of the family.

Also, if you have a testimony, email it to me at testify {at} fireknights {dot} net. I would love to hear it and I may just post it here on the blog.