In 1949, after being re-elected for a second term as President, Harry S. Truman told his staff not to pay attention to the criticism over their appointments. When pressed by his staff, Truman said – “I’ll stand by you, but if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Does your loyalty to God depend upon your circumstances or do you remain faithful (loyal) even when the heat is on?

In the Old Testament book of Daniel, we find a story (Chapter 3) of three young Jews who remained faithful to God even when the heat really got turned up, literally! The story begins when the king issues a decree that everyone must bow down and worship a gold statue made in his image or be thrown into a fiery furnace. When the three men refused to obey the king’s decree, he was furious and summoned them, giving them two choices, either bow down to the gold statue or be thrown into a blazing furnace.

They refused to worship the statue, and here is what we read, verses 16-20 – Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 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. Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and his attitude toward them changed. He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace.

About now, Shad, Mesh, and Benny were probably wondering where God was as they were bound and thrown into the fiery furnace (v.21). This fire was so hot that several of the king’s soldiers were killed by the flames as they put the three men into the furnace (vv.22-23). After some time, King Nebby had his advisors check on the status of the three men, no doubt convinced that they were cooked to “well done” by then. But guess what, the three men were seen walking around in the fiery furnace, unbound and unharmed. Plus, a fourth man (vv.24-25) was in there with them! Say what? How did he get in there?

How does the story end? Not only were the three young men rescued by their God (vv.26-27), and promoted by the king (v.30), but an entire province was instructed to have faith in this God.

Just who was that fourth person? King Nebby described him as “a son of the gods,” an amazing insight from a once pagan king. Remarkably, he then goes on to proclaim what we know today: Jesus is the Son of God (vv.28-29). He is Immanuel – God with us (Matthew 1:23).   

How do we know King Nebby had a change of heart and began to worship God? In the very next chapter, he confessed his sins to God and professes this – At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation (4:34).

If you get nothing else out of today’s writing, I want you to at least hear these six words, found in v.18… “But even if he does not.” Scripture might not contain more heroic words than those.

So, right now, I ask you, and I ask me – Do you have the unwavering “I know God can but even if He doesn’t” kind of faith? Are you still faithful even when the heat is on?

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The culture in which we live continues to be a steady stream of negative, tending to suck the life right out of us. Maybe it is not the culture that has you feeling dry. It could be that you have experienced something of immeasurable hardship. Alone. Isolated. Trapped inside walls that seem to reach to the upper limits of the sky. Wondering if anybody, even God, knows, or cares, that you are in there. Any glimmer of hope is like the sun as it rises in the morning, hidden behind the spectacular color of the autumn leaves. Its beauty lessened in the mist, often hard to see. 

Does your soul feel dry? If you are like me, when I find myself parched, it is sometimes hard for me to experience the closeness of God. Are you having a hard time feeling the presence of God? Has it been weeks, months, maybe even years, since you experienced God’s sweet intimacy?

Psalm 13 is a short six verse lament in which the psalmist (David) feels forgotten.

v.1 – How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

2 – How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 – Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

4 – and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 – But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

6 – I will sing the LORD’s praise, for he has been good to me.

The first two verses reveal what David sees as the problem. Do you see the depth of David’s despair? Four times in these two verses he cries out “How long?” Maybe right now you find yourself crying out, “How long God must this go on?”

In v.3, David petitions God in desperation – “look on me and answer” and “give light to my eyes.” Can you hear the urgency in David’s voice? Maybe you have that same urgency today.

V.4 has David seemingly feeling defeated. And if losing wasn’t bad enough, the sting of hearing the victor boast after the victory was almost too much to bear. One of the hallmarks of David’s psalms is his awareness of both God and the enemy.

Yet we see in v.5, despite his agony, David declares God’s mercy. Even if he can rejoice in nothing else, here we see David rejoicing in God’s salvation, just possibly in that moment the only solid ground David is standing on.  What are you rejoicing in today?

David began this psalm by pleading and in v.6 we see a huge transition. David’s pleading changes to praise! Amid David crying out to God, his eyes were enlightened, and he moved from a place of woe is me to a place of praise, from a place of pessimism to a place of proclamation!

So, today, amid whatever it is that you are facing (and we all are facing something!), will you allow yourself to sing Yahweh’s praise because He has been good to you? Your situation might not change, but your perspective will change. You will begin to move from pessimism (despair) to proclamation (declaration). Maybe not immediately, but keep singing Yahweh’s praises, and eventually you will experience the presence of the One who can change you.

I will end with these words from the hymn “Approach, My Soul, the Mercy Seat” (written by John Newton). Allow God to speak to you in these words – “Poor tempest-tossed soul, be still, my promised grace receive; ’tis Jesus speaks; I must, I will, I can, I do believe.”

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Have you ever looked over toward your neighbor’s house and wished you had that perfectly manicured lawn with the beautifully landscaped flower beds? You wonder why the grass is always greener in their yard. All you see in your own yard is brown grass with an occasional blade of green grass. You might say, it makes you “green with envy.”

You look at other people’s social media posts and perhaps feel a little jealous of their “perfect life.” Boy do they ever seem to have it all together. In their posts all you see are well behaved smiling kids, beautiful Caribbean vacation pictures, romantic dinners at five-star restaurants, but in your “picture book” of life all you see are stinky diapers, piles of unpaid bills, leaky plumbing, and bags under your eyes. Don’t be fooled by the “perfect lives” you see on social media. I can assure you; those lives are not perfect.

If we are all honest, we do at times feel envious or jealous of someone else. The Bible calls this kind of attitude both harmful and sinful. We find this in Proverbs 14:30, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” In the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, he gives us two lists. The first is works of the flesh that arise from our sinful desires, whereas the second are the character traits (the “fruit”) that the Spirit produces in the life of a believer. Included in the sinful acts of the flesh is jealousy. To read this extended passage, click here.

Did you also know that God calls Himself a jealous God? In the second of the Ten Commandments God says this, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for, I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:4-5). Wait a minute; didn’t you just say that jealousy is a sin?

Let’s look at jealousy in two ways. It is important to understand how this word “jealous” is used. Its use in the passage I just referenced from Exodus to describe God’s jealousy is different from the way in which it is used to describe sinful behavior in Galatians. God is not jealous or envious because someone has something He needs or wants (like your neighbor’s lawn, their well-behaved kids, that promotion, etc.), but rather, God is jealous when we give to someone or something what rightfully belongs to Him – we are to worship God and God alone. The first commandment (Exodus 20:3, Deuteronomy 5:7) is “You shall have no Gods before me.” Jesus says the same thing. In Luke 4:8 He says this, “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.”

Jealousy is a sin when we desire (envious of) something that is not ours. On the flip side, worship, praise and honor belong to God and God alone, so God is rightly jealous when we give our worship to people or things (idols.) Only God is truly worthy of our praise. In Psalm 145:3 we read these words, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.”

So, today, I ask you this – Who or what are you envious of? Who or what are worshipping that is making God jealous? God wants all your praise, and He is worthy of all your praise! Let go of those things that make you green with envy. Instead, turn your heart and mind to God and worship Him and Him alone!

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Have you ever lost power in your house and found yourself in the dark? You hope that your eyes quickly adjust to the darkened environment. As you grope your way through complete darkness, trying to avoid banging your shins on the rocking chair or knocking over a lamp, you look for the nearest window in order to open the curtains, letting in much needed light.

Our eyes are amazingly complex organs that are made to adapt to changes in light. In adapting to the darkness our eyes go through a three-phase process. The pupils dilate very quickly, the cone cells in the retina take about ten minutes to adapt to the dark, while it takes the rod cells in the retina, which are more sensitive to changes in light than the cones, up to forty-five minutes to adapt. Even after our eyes completely adapt to the darkness, we are thankful for the little bit of light coming in through the window. 

in through the window.

Sometimes in our walk with Jesus, we also find ourselves in darkness. And just like that room is pitch black, you feel as if you are groping your way through complete darkness. It could be that as you follow God’s plan you feel as if you are jumping off a cliff in the complete darkness, just hoping that there is water down below. Maybe you are in the midst of a difficult season of life, wondering where God is. Quite possibly you have been asking God for direction, only to hear nothing from Him. Or you have allowed your intimacy with God to wane, and you feel distant from Him.

Every follower of Jesus finds themselves in times of darkness at some point or another. What are we to do in those moments of darkness? Isaiah 50:10 gives us the answer – “Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.”

Scripture is full of references to God being the One who turns darkness into light. Below are just two of those verses.

“For it is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness” (Psalm 18:28).

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’” (John 8:12).

Those words of Jesus in the verse above offer two proclamations. When Jesus says that he is the light of the world, he is proclaiming that he is God, the source of all light and life. But Jesus also proclaimed that his followers will also have the light of life, by following him and living like him in the world. However, we are simply recipients of that light. Elsewhere, Jesus commands his followers to also be light – “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14).

But our light is not our own light. Just as the moon does not have light of its own, but rather its light comes from reflected sunlight bouncing off its surface, we too should only reflect the light of Jesus to the dark world around us.     

So, today, will you trust Jesus to illuminate your darkness, trusting in His light, the light that will guide your path? And will you, do you, reflect that light to those around you?  

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None of us have to look too long or hard to find someone or something wanting to zap our energy, enthusiasm, and excitement. How about that crazy neighbor or annoying co-worker, they just always seem to know what buttons to push. Or maybe that nagging ache in your foot, from a broken toe years ago that never healed correctly. Being a caregiver for someone. An ongoing health issue that keeps you from living the life you once lived. It could be that you have bounced from one relationship to another, all of them ended poorly, and you begin to wonder if “Mr. Right” is even out there. Every time you take your car to the garage for routine maintenance the mechanic tells you that major service is needed on your engine. Let’s be real – life is a grind.  

Regardless of what it is that zaps your energy, enthusiasm and excitement, it is true that for most of us, we most often try to find our contentment from external circumstances rather than an inner attitude. In a nutshell, we look to the world for contentment rather than drawing it from God. 

A verse in Jeremiah speaks to this very thing. It talks of where we draw our water from. In Jeremiah 2:13 we read these words, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Let me give some context for that verse. Water was a rare luxury in ancient days, and water from an underground spring, a never-ending source, was to be cherished. On the other hand, cisterns only hold rainwater. At best, they store stagnant water; and at worst, they are cracked and the water seeps back into the ground. So, the verse we just looked at tells us that the nation of Judah rejected God, they looked away from the “spring of living water” and by doing so they looked elsewhere for water (life), as this verse says, “they dug their own cisterns.” 

Isn’t that also true of us? We often look to a broken and leaky cistern to meet our daily needs, or in other words, to find sustenance, to find life. And if that one doesn’t work, we look for another broken and leaky cistern. And when that cistern runs dry, we move to the next one, on and on.

While the verse speaks of where to look for all that we need, it is also a verse that speaks of trust. It asks, “Do you trust God or look to the world to provide for all your needs?”

The next time someone or something threatens to steal your contentment, right then and there you have a choice – you can choose to draw from God’s well of living water or you can choose to draw from those other sources, those broken cisterns that have dirty water and so often run dry. When you find yourself in need of a drink, say, “Jesus, you are my source of living water and right now in this situation I come to You, asking You to fill me up,” allowing Him to quiet your spirit and calm your heart.

Read John 4:1-26 for an encounter Jesus has with a Samaritan woman at a well. This is his longest recorded conversation with one person in the New Testament. A religious teacher hanging out with a woman of dubious reputation, highly questionable (4:27). And a Jew talking to a Samaritan, also forbidden (4:7-9). Jesus crossed all kinds of boundaries to meet with this woman. He does the same for you and me today!

Remember, broken cisterns cannot hold water, they eventually run dry, so, today, draw from the spring of living water. Then repeat tomorrow, the next day, and every day after that!

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Have you ever wondered why technical drawings used in architecture and engineering are called blueprints? A process that was invented by a French chemist in the mid-1800s used a mix of chemicals to create a process to copy a drawing from one paper to another paper. The paper with the drawing was placed over a blank paper mixed with the chemicals. A reaction occurred that caused the black lines on the original paper to become white on the second paper and the background of the second paper to turn blue, thus the new drawing was called a blueprint. With the advance of technology, this antiquated chemical method was first replaced by a less expensive method that produced dark lines on a white background and later with drawings generated digitally by computer-aided design (CAD) and printed from large format printers or plotters.    

When we had our house built, imagine what would have happened if the builder didn’t go by the blueprints. What if they just went from memory? The bedroom might have ended up where the kitchen was supposed to be. The improper placement of a load-bearing wall would have jeopardized the structural integrity of the house by not properly distributing the weight down to the foundation. And when cutting a hole for an 8X8 sliding glass door, what if they didn’t actually use a tape measure, but instead just eyeballed the proper length, saying, “That’s close enough.” It would have been very difficult to properly install an 8-foot door in an opening that was six inches too narrow.

Failing to read the blueprints and guessing at board lengths would have disastrous results. Not only is it important to use the correct blueprints and measuring devices, it is also important to make sure that the equipment used is in good working order. What if the saw blade was dull or the laser level was not properly calibrated, well, once again, you can imagine the results?

We too are often judged (measured) by others, and often times also judge ourselves, using many measuring sticks, but most, if not all, of those measuring devices are calibrated incorrectly. Other people are simply not good tools by which to measure our own attitudes and behaviors.

Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us that the Bible is what we are to use to calibrate, measure, and judge our thoughts and attitudes. We read, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all of creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”    

If we allow ourselves to be measured by Scripture, we will always come up short, but in striving to reach that perfect biblical calibration, we will soon find ourselves becoming more like Jesus. Here is what we read in 2 Corinthians 3:18 – “But we Christians have no veil over our faces; we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord. And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him” (TLB).

Are you allowing the Word of God to judge the intents and thoughts of your heart? It is my prayer that you and I, through the power of the Holy Spirit, allow the “perfectly calibrated” and “perfectly measured” Word of God to be the blueprint and measuring stick from which we build our own lives.    

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