[Darris McNeely] I’ve been reflecting on the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego told in Daniel chapter 3, where they were thrown into a fiery furnace. Again, a story we all know quite well. We covered earlier in a Daily the fact that they were loosed from that fiery furnace. In fact, in verse 25, when King Nebuchadnezzar looks into the fiery furnace, he says, “I see four men loose.” They were loosed, really. When you understand that the three – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego – were thrown into the fire all bound up in ropes. And yet when the king looks in, he sees them loose, and there’s the fourth man in the fire. There’s an important lesson for us in regard to trials and difficulties and the challenges of life that we have.

Because as we see that this fiery trial loosed these men, literally, from the binds, the ropes that bound them in, there’s a lesson for us to reflect on in our own life, because trials can happen. Trials and difficulties will happen in this life. But you know, trials can be sometimes caused by many different parts of life and our own particular case.

Fear perhaps can be a trial for us. Are you a fearful person, fearing life itself? Fearing what might happen, fearing the future? Fearing and not having a confidence in life?

How about doubt? Is doubt something that plagues your life, where you doubt your own abilities? You doubt someone’s promises, someone’s faithfulness, someone’s commitment to you? How about insecurity?

Might you be insecure or have feelings of inferiority? You’re just not confident with your life and can’t muster up enough courage to face some of the challenges, difficulties, or big decisions, the big-ticket decisions that we have to make in our life?

How about a sin? Outright sin. An addiction – to drugs, to alcohol, an addiction to sex, other sins that bind us together?

All of these are representative of things that bind us. They’re ropes, they can be chains, that bind us in emotionally, spiritually, and inhibit us and keep us from moving forward and advancing in our life.

Well, here’s the point. Like the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, they were bound up and then they were loosed. When you look at the story of the fact that they were protected by God – there was a fourth man in that fire, remember – God did help them through a fiery trial.

The point for you and I is this: sometimes we must go through the trials that are brought on by fear, by doubt, by insecurities, even by sin – our own sin or someone else’s sin that impacts our life – we have to go through the fiery trials to be unbound, to be unchained from these matters that bind us emotionally and spiritually, and keep us from realizing the full happiness of life, the full success of life, and our great potential as children of God.

It takes a fiery trial at times, when we go through it, God being with us, we come out on the other end – we come out loosed. Loosed from some of these problems. Approach it that way and determine in your own heart and in your own mind that wherever you might be bound and chained by certain aspects of life, you’re going to have a relationship with God, and you’re going to allow Him, through faith, through submission to His purpose and will, to take you and loose you from those chains and from those ropes emotionally that bind us together in life.

Take God as your partner. Trust God and have confidence in Him to see you through the trial.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.