God works in mysterious ways. We quote this often, but when we really experience a mysterious, sometimes mind-numbing work of God in our lives do we recognize it as such?
The Old Testament story of the three Hebrew men being sentenced to death by furnace is a good example of a mysterious work. The men were to die because they refused to bow down to an image of the psychotic king whom they worked for. They accepted their fate knowing full well that God could rescue them but probably wouldn’t.
So in the fire they went. The soldiers who threw them in were destroyed by the flames shooting out of the oven door. The Hebrews landed inside where they were met by the Angel of the Lord who had come to be with them in the furnace.
Later the king looked in to see if they were dead. But instead of three men, he saw four walking around unscathed by the flames. He exclaimed to those around him, “Behold I see four men loose, and walking in the midst of the fire, and there is no hurt in them, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” Dan. 3: 92
Astonished, he called them out saying, “You servants of the most high God, go forth, and come. And immediately Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago went out from the midst of the fire.” vs. 93
The ruling class gathered together to consider what just happened. They could not deny that these men were miraculously saved from sure death! The king, a complete narcissist, was so moved by this event that he cried out, “Blessed be the God of Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago, who has sent his angel, and delivered his servants that believed in him.” vs. 95
He then proclaimed in a decree that all of his subjects now bow to the God of the Hebrews: “The most high God has worked signs and wonders toward me. It has seemed good to me therefore to publish His signs, because they are great: and his wonders, because they are mighty: and his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom...” vs. 99
Being sentenced to death by fire, being met by the Angel of God in a stoked furnace, being rescued from the flames, then being promoted by the king to higher government service, and finally being able to serve their God instead of the idol of the king are surely mind-numbing works of God.
As children of our Heavenly Father, we may too find ourselves in a furnace of some kind. No matter how mysterious, no matter how “wrong” it may seem, we have to accept what comes our way as works of God for and in us. Only then can God touch our lives and the lives of those who are witnesses of these works.
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