Today, lets start with music.
So, before you read, listen to this Closer Than Close. Let it set the tone. Then come back to read this.
Welcome back.
Remember the burning bush? Remember the burning fiery furnace? Two different stories, two different situations. Moses in the wilderness, King Nebuchadnezzar with the three Hebrew captives in Babylon, and yet the similarity between them is almost too profound to ignore.
Fireeeeeeeeeeee!
Both were strange situations. Both involved fire. And both broke a law that fire is never supposed to break. And I mean Never.. Now I think I’m a little too excited. I am a science student, and of course I always come back to the Laws of physics, chemistry, or biology. Even as a Sunday school teacher, I always end up with these basics. Sometimes I ask… what if I didn’t study these things(this is me just thinking out loud)….
Today we are going back to chemistry class. Think about combustion for a minute. Is it one of the most irreversible reactions in the universe, right? Fire doesn’t negotiate. Once something is burning, it is being changed. Wood is reduced to ash, and in most cases those things are reduced to nothing well unless something greater than the fire is dwelling inside the thing that’s burning.
That’s the only explanation for what happened on that mountain and in that furnace.
The bush was burning, yet the leaves were fine. The fire was raging around Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and yet when the king looked into the flames, he didn’t see three men , he saw four, walking around, unburned.
Now let’s look back to our own life for a moment.
Maybe everything feels wrong right now. Maybe life is hurting. Maybe it’s burning. Maybe it’s hot, I mean hotter than you’ve ever had to endure, hotter than you know how to explain to the people around you who keep asking if you’re okay. And here’s the question I need you to sit with:
Are you sure this isn’t God trying to get your attention the same way he got Moses’ attention at the bush, the same way he got Nebuchadnezzar’s attention at the furnace?
Are you sure this heat isn’t the beginning of a new start, disguised as an ending?
Are you sure God isn’t closer than close? Closer than he’s ever been, precisely because the fire is this intense?
The bush was burning, but the leaves weren’t. That detail matters. It means the fire in your life right now is not there to destroy you. It’s there to get your attention, to prove something, to produce something. You will walk through it. But you will not walk out of it hurt, diminished, or less than who you were. You will walk out of it leveled up, carrying a deeper, realer, more personal experience of God than you had before you went in. A fresh encounter. Not something you heard about secondhand. Yours. And an encounter like that doesn’t stop with you. It becomes something that transcends generations. Your children, and your children’s children, will still be talking about the fire that was burning and nothing was consumed and the God who met you in it.
So the next time you see the bush burning, the next time you feel the heat that seems to have no reasonable explanation, or hear what feels like an order to “increase the fire by seven times”, remember four things:
1. God is drawing your attention. This is not random suffering. Something is being said in the flames.
2. You are not coming out the same person who went in. The fire is not neutral. It is producing a version of you that didn’t exist before.
3. God is closer than close. He is not watching from a distance while you burn. He is in the fire with you.
4. Get ready for an encounter that will transcend generations. What you carry out of this will outlive this season and possibly outlive you.
There’s a reason gold has to go through fire before it can be called pure. The heat isn’t the enemy of the gold; it’s the process that reveals it. The impurities burn off. What’s left is what was always meant to shine.
So don’t waste your burning bush. Don’t waste the heat. Don’t rush to escape a process that God intends to use. Let it do what it came to do, and let the gold that comes out of you be pure.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog post! Permit me to say i am committed to sharing my journey and feeding your reading appetite with every diary entry. If you have stories of your own or messages to share, feel free to reach out to me at jemmylistens@gmail.com—I’d love to feature your stories too! Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog and follow me on Instagram. I’ll be in the comments section, eagerly waiting for your thoughts on this post. I’ll see you here sometime next week or sooner!
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