Glorify ye the Lord in the fires (Isaiah 24:15)
Mark the little word "in"! We are to honor Him in the trial - in that which is an affliction indeed and though there have been casess where God did not let His saints feel the fire, yet, ordinarily, fire hurts.
But just here we are to glorify Him by our prefect faith hin his goodness and love that has permitted all this to come upon us.
And more than that, we are to believe that out of this is coming somthing for more for His praisethan could have come but for this fiery trial.
We can only go through some fires with a large faith; little faith will fail. We must have the victory in the furnace.
A man has as much religion as he can show in times of trouble. The men who were cast into the fiery furnace came out as they went in - except their bonds.
How often in some furnace of affliction God strikes them off! Their bodies were unhurt - their skin not even blistered. Their hair was unsinged, there garments were not scorched, not even the smell of fire had not passed upon them. And that is the way Christians shoud come out of furnace trials - liberated from their bonds, but untouched by the flames.
Triumphing over them in it (Col. 2:15)
When each earthly prop gives under,
And life seems a restless sea,
Are you then a God kept-wonder,
Satisfied and calm and free?
Devotional exerpts from Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
Published by Zondervan Publishing Company