Through the Fire

The fire will not destroy you, because He is standing in it with you.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

When the fire comes in our lives, the first thing we might think is that something has gone wrong. Maybe it is the diagnosis of sickness, or the business failing, or the family member walking away from God. Whatever it is, it is not supposed to happen. We feel as though something strange is happening to us, that the Christian life is supposed to be different from this. We are surprised.

But Peter says, “Do not be surprised.” The fire is not strange. Fiery trials come upon you to test you, and through them you share the sufferings of Christ. The fire is not the absence of your inheritance in God. It is the path on which God brings you to your inheritance.

Scripture is full of fire. Paul wrote his letters from the middle of it. Peter wrote to believers in the middle of it. The book of Job is one of the oldest books in Scripture, given to teach us that the righteous can suffer terribly. James opens his letter telling believers to count it all joy when they meet trials of various kinds (James 1:2-4). The fire is not unusual in the Christian life; it is central to it.

So when the fire comes, the question is not why it has come, although that is a legitimate question and one we considered in a previous chapter. The question is this: Will you come through the fire?

Will you stand and endure? Will you walk through this without abandoning Christ, without retreating into self-pity, without giving up? Or will the fire crush you – leaving you bitter, hardened, withdrawn from God?

The New Testament epistles are written to believers in the middle of fire, and they say to those believers: “Do not give up! Endure to the end.”

The Fire Is Not Strange

Many kinds of fire will come to you in your walk with God. You may experience the fire of physical sickness or injury – your own or that of someone you love. Your fire may be related to marriage or family issues, the troubles that can grow in close relationships. You may face the fire of financial pressure, or the fire of spiritual warfare, when the enemy throws everything he has against you. The fire may be persecution for Jesus’ sake, mild in some places and fierce in others. Or it could be the fire of rejection, of betrayal by friends, of false accusations, of being misunderstood. You may light the fire yourself through poor decisions, so that you reap what you have sown, or the fire may come through no fault of your own.

Sometimes several of these come at you all at once, layered upon one another, and you find yourself walking through three or four fires in the same season. Peter does not say “if” the fire comes. He says “when.” The fire is part of your calling in Christ.

Even Paul, the great apostle who had seen the risen Christ and been caught up to the third heaven, suffered such fire that he despaired of life itself (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). He thought he was going to die. He felt the sentence of death in his heart. If God let Paul go through this, He may also let you. The fire is not the mark of God’s absence, but a proof of God’s calling upon your life.

The Inheritance Is Kept for You

When teaching about the fire, Peter does not begin with the fire itself. He begins with the inheritance.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5)

Before he addresses the trial, Peter wants you to know what is being kept for you. God has set aside an eternal inheritance for you. It is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. It does not rust or decay like the things of this world, and it cannot be taken from you. It is being kept in heaven for you, guarded by God Himself.

When you are in the fire, your painful circumstances can look like the only things that are real. The bills, the diagnosis, the broken relationship, the job loss, the lost dream – these are concrete and present, but your inheritance feels very abstract and far away. But Peter wants you to know the truth: The things of this world are passing away. Your inheritance is eternal. And the One Who guards it for you is also guarding you to receive it.

Notice that Peter does not say God shields you from the fire. He says you are guarded through faith for the salvation that will be revealed in eternity. The shielding does not keep the fire away. The shielding keeps you through the fire. God will bring you home. The fire will not destroy you.

You Will Rejoice, and You Will Grieve

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

In the same breath, Peter says two things that seem opposed to each other: “in this you rejoice” and “you have been grieved.”

This is the tension of the Christian life, and you must embrace it. You rejoice, because you know what is being kept for you. You know that what God is doing in this fire is producing something more precious than gold. You know that the day will soon come when you will see Him, and today’s suffering will be so small in light of eternity. So you rejoice!

But the grief is also very real. You are hurting, and Peter does not ask you to put on a smile and pretend everything is fine. You are grieved, yet at the same time you rejoice.

You may have felt that you must be a weak believer because you are still hurting in the middle of a trial. In reality, the grieving and the rejoicing live together in the heart of the believer who is walking through the fire. Peter lived in this tension, as did Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament. The Lord Jesus did too. He turned His face toward Jerusalem for the joy set before Him while sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Do not let anyone tell you that the Christian life is one or the other. It is both. You will rejoice, and you will grieve – sometimes at the same time. This is the spiritual reality of the Christian life.

The Fire Refines Your Faith

The fire is not arbitrary. It comes for a purpose, and Peter tells us what the purpose is.

… so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:7)

In the ancient world, gold was refined by fire. The ore was heated, the dross rose to the surface and the goldsmith skimmed it off. What remained was pure gold, more precious than what had gone into the fire.

This is what God is doing in your life through suffering. He is testing your faith. The pressure of the fire brings what is in you to the surface. Some of it is gold – the trust in God you did not know you had, the love for Him that endures when everything else has been stripped away, the strength of His Son living in you. But there is also dross – the hidden bitterness, the self-pity, the demands that God do things on your timetable, the love of comfort over the love of God. The fire makes you see both.

And the goldsmith does not destroy the gold by skimming off the dross. He purifies it. The fire’s purpose is to purify your faith, not cause your destruction. God is making you strong – fit for the day His Son returns.

This is why Peter calls your faith more precious than gold. Gold perishes. The marble palaces of the great empires of the earth crumble into dust. The wealth the rich spend their lives amassing is taken by someone else or rots in the grave with them. But your faith does not. It will be revealed at the day of Jesus Christ for praise and glory and honor. This is the only thing on earth you can carry into the world to come.

The Fire Is Not Endless

The fire is not the whole of your life. It comes, and it goes, and it comes back again, but it is not endless.

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, Who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 5:10)

Compared to the world to come, the longest fire of your life is only for a moment – as Peter says, it is for “a little while.” Even if you suffered every day from your conversion to your last breath, it would still be a moment compared to the eternity that comes after. Paul calls our afflictions “light and momentary.” They rarely feel light or momentary at the time but measured against the weight of glory that is coming, they are.

In addition, the fires of this life are not continuous. They come in seasons. Sometimes the heat dies down and there is rest and refreshing in God. Then a new fire begins, often when you have just begun to think the worst is behind you.

There is a story of a young boxer who said to his manager, “I want to fight the champion.” The manager said, “No. You are not ready for the champion.” “But I want to fight him. I am ready.” The manager replied, “You have only so many fights in you, and it is my job to choose the right ones for you.”

So it is with God. He knows the fires ahead for you, how hot they will be and how long they will last. Don’t go looking or asking for fire. God will bring it to you in His wisdom when you need it, and He will bring it to an end at the right time. And He will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you!

The Fire Will Not Destroy You

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

God is faithful. He will not let you be tested beyond your ability to bear. Often, the way of escape is through the fire, not out of it. But the fire will not destroy you, because He is faithful and He says it will not.

At times, it will feel like the fire might destroy you. Many times you will feel as though you are about to be consumed, sure that no one has gone through what you are going through, that the heat is uniquely yours and no one could understand. Paul wants you to know: This is not unique to you. It is common to man. Believers down through the ages have felt the same way in their own fires. And in every one of them, God was faithful.

When you have come through the fire, you will see what you could not see in the middle. You will see that He held you when you thought you could not stand. You will see that He provided strength when you were sure you had none left. You will see that He was wise about the heat, duration and timing. The fire will have done in you what nothing else could have done. And you will be standing, refined, His beloved child.

He Is in the Fire with You

Finally, and most importantly, God is in the fire with you.

When King Nebuchadnezzar threatened to throw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the burning fiery furnace, they had already settled in their hearts what they would do.

“If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17-18)

This is true faith. They believed God could deliver them. They believed He would deliver them. But even if He did not deliver them, they were not going to bow before the idol. They had surrendered the outcome to God. Whether He rescued them or not, they were His.

Consequently, they were bound and thrown into the furnace, and the fire was so hot that the men who threw them in were killed by the flame. But then Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, and he leaped to his feet in astonishment.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 3:24-25)

Three men had been thrown in but now there were four. The fourth was the Lord Himself, walking with His servants in the middle of the fire that was meant to destroy them.

This is the meaning of the fire for the believer. You are not alone in it. Jesus is with you. He has not abandoned you. He is walking through the fire beside you, holding you, keeping you, so that when you come out, you will come out unharmed, not even smelling of smoke, your bonds burned off but your life intact.

And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them. (Daniel 3:27)

Will You Come Through the Fire?

Many do not come through the fire. They begin well and then, somewhere in the middle of the fire, they give up. They withdraw from God in their hearts even if they keep the outward forms of faith. They become bitter at God, at others, at their own lives. They harden into self-pity. The fire that was meant to refine them hardens them instead.

Do not be one of them. Settle it in your heart now. Whatever this fire costs you, you will not let go of Him. Whatever you do not understand, you will trust Him. Whatever He does or does not deliver you from, you will love Him and serve Him and walk with Him to the end.

Look at Him. He is in the fire with you. He has called you, He is keeping you and He will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. The end is sure. Your inheritance is being kept.

Walk through the fire. Don’t give up. Jesus is with you.

Let’s pray together.

Father, we look at You in the middle of the fire. Some of us are in fires we did not see coming. Some have been in the fire for a long time. Some are weary. Lord, You see each one. You know each fire perfectly. You have measured the heat and set the bounds.

We confess that we have been surprised. We have thought that something strange was happening to us. We have wondered why we were going through this. Forgive us for forgetting that the fire is proof of Your calling, not the absence of Your calling. Forgive us for the times we have grown bitter. Forgive us for the times we have hardened our hearts and demanded that You explain.

Father, we set our eyes on the inheritance You are keeping for us. It is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. It outlasts every fire of this life. And You are guarding us by Your power for the day we will receive it. We rest in this. You are faithful.

So we embrace Your refining, Lord. We do not know what is in us until the fire reveals it. Bring the dross to the surface and skim it off. Show us what we have been hiding. And let the gold You have placed in us shine for the praise and glory and honor of Your Son when He is revealed.

We thank You that the fire is not endless. The longest fire of our lives is a moment compared to the world to come. You have set the bounds of every fire. You will Yourself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish us. We trust You with the timing. We trust You with the heat. We trust You with the duration. We do not ask for more fires, but we will not run from the ones You have allowed.

We thank You that You are faithful. You will not let us be tested beyond what we can bear. You will enable us to endure. We will not be consumed.

And, Lord Jesus, we look at You. You are in the fire with us. The fourth Man in the furnace, the One who walks with His own through the flame. You have not abandoned us. We are not alone. We will not let go of You. Whatever this fire costs, whatever we do not understand, whatever You do or do not deliver us from, we will love You. We will serve You. We will walk with You to the end.

Hold us fast. By Your grace, we will come through.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.