A Faith Forged In The Fire

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Dedicated with overwhelming love to my dear friends K and C, with whom I have seen Jesus walking in the fire.

There once was a man who was ship-wrecked on a desert island. All on board his vessel died but him, and he was all alone on the island.

He set about to build a small house and couple other small structures. He had to fashion tools of his own because he didn’t have any tools. And so he built his camp as best he could. He was not very good at it at first, and it required many lessons and many failed attempts until he was able to fashion structures that would stand up in the elements. When he was done, he realized that it was a good camp. There were a couple of things that he might have changed if he could have built it again, but it was a good camp, and so he settled in to the life that God had given him.

Every day, he would read his Bible out loud, from the book of Psalms. He did this for 3 reasons; to keep his faith strong, so that he would not forget how to speak, and so he would always remember what it was like to hear a human voice. Day after day, he read and he spoke those Psalms out loud, and he prayed.

The man had a sack in which he placed the few things that he would take with him from the island when and if he was rescued. The sack sat against a tree at the edge of the camp, waiting for that day. And so every day, the man spent his day reading and speaking the psalms of God, praying, hunting for food, and ever watching the water in hope of seeing a passing ship that might rescue him.

Early one morning as the sun was rising, when he was far up on a mountain hunting for food, he saw enormous billows of smoke rising from the direction of his camp on the beach. (Click on the "Read More!" link below)


As quickly as he could, he ran all the way down the mountain and back to the beach, only to find that his entire camp had burned to the ground. His tools were intact and his sack that was leaning against the tree at the edge of the camp, but the buildings had been completely destroyed. Smoke filled the sky, and there was nothing left of what he had worked so hard to build.

I imagine that it would have been easy for most people to become full of despair at that moment, thinking back on having been ship-wrecked, on the loneliness he experienced, on the hardship he had endured, and now the loss of everything he had built.

But this man wasn’t like everyone. He had a faith, and this circumstance had only served to strengthen that faith until it was stronger than ever before. Every day, he had been reading the Psalms and praying. Every day, he had read those Psalms and listened as God’s Word spoke out loud to him of how God will always be with us, how there are angels around us to protect us and keep us, how in good times and in bad, in life and even in death, our God will be with us.

And so he did not look at his circumstance through eyes of despair. Hard as it may have been, the man looked at his circumstance through the eyes of faith. He looked at the camp in ruins and the only things that remained - his bag and his tools - and he saw something amazing.

He saw that he still had the tools that he needed to rebuild a new life. Not only that, he realized that he had already learned most of the hard lessons that he would need to learn about how to build and how not to build. This time, he realized, he could build something that was nearly perfect, a better camp, a smarter camp, one stronger, one more secure, a camp that would never burn down again.

And so, yet early in that morning, he set about to begin his work with great passion and joy, and in no time at all, he had rebuilt the first building of the camp.

The next morning as he was beginning to work on building the next structure, he glanced out to sea, and what he saw took his breath away. At the very edge of the horizon, he saw sails. Heading straight for the island was a ship. Several hours later, that ship, the good ship Hope, anchored off the coast, and sent a landing party to shore.

As the landing boat approached the shore a half mile down the beach from his camp, the man grabbed his bag and ran down to meet them. He met them with joy, and told them of his story. The men on the landing boat were amazed, and they immediately developed immense respect for the man when they heard of his ordeal. He, in turn, had great appreciation for them, for they had come to him in the time of his greatest need.

“There’s just one thing that I don‘t understand, though,” the man asked the men of the crew as they were rowing back to the good ship Hope. “How did you know that I was here? How did you find me?”

“Why, we saw the smoke of your signal fire yesterday, coming up over the horizon,” they said. “It’s a good thing you made your fire that big, too, or we never would have seen it and come to your aid.”

And so the man realized that not only had his experience on the island drawn him closer to God, but that God had used the loss of all that he had built there to bring him together with those with whom he would share a deep friendship for the rest of his life.

This man’s faith had been forged by God in the fire.

Many people have lived stories that are much like that of the man on the island. The faith which they possess today has been forged in the fire, just as his was. In the midst of that fire, they have been reading God’s Word and praying. They have been hearing it in their ear, telling them of God’s earnest desire to be one with them, of His earnest desire for them to be one with one another, of His earnest desire that they might reach out together to help those around them who are yet in the midst of a fire. They have been sensing those words of God and those prayers building up their most holy faith as never before.

These things are gifts that can only come from God. He has given you another gift, as well. If you will pause and consider the circle of friends - I mean true friends - who stand around you, you will realize the precious gift from God that surrounds you.

All around you stand those who saw the smoke of your own fire rising above the horizon. They saw it and they came to you. For you, these people are like the crew of the good ship Hope.

In God’s Word, we read of Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego, men whose faith was forged by God in the fire. Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace by an evil king who demanded that they worship him instead of God. But they would not. And so the king had the fiery furnace heated to seven times its intended heat, so hot that the men who threw Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego - bound hand and feet - into the furnace died from the heat.

But when he heard no screams, the king walked to where he could see into the furnace and he looked in to see what was happening. “How many men did we throw bound into the furnace?,” the king asked incredulously. “Three,” the people around him replied. “Well, I see four men walking free inside of the furnace,” the king said with amazement, “and the fourth one looks like the Son of God.”

If we seek a simple and genuine faith, asking God to help us as we sometimes blindly find our way in that faith, He will be with us always. There will still be fiery furnaces in our lives, but if we trust in Him, He will accompany us every step of the way.

I have had the honor of sharing my life with wonderful people. I have seen some of them go through times when it was as if they were being thrown, bound hand and foot, into the fiery furnace. I have seen them set free in the midst of that fire. And I have seen One walking with them. When I have beheld them walking through their fiery furnace, I have seen Jesus.

We must remember this as we walk forward in this life.. We must remember that, as we trust in Him in all things, and we continue to read His Word and pray, as we continue to live the life that He has given us, He will be with us always. And when we seek and possess and live out a simple and genuine faith in God, even if it’s on a desert island or in a fiery furnace, people will see Jesus.