When You Sing a Love Song - Staci Stallings Page 0,2

breathed those words in, deeper and deeper still. She closed her eyes even as the end of the story was read. “Lord, we need You to be with us in this fire,” she prayed in her heart. “All of us. Every single one of us. We need You to be with us, to guide us, to help us, to not let us be in this thing alone. Lord, we need You. We need You.”

It was then that she felt the small hand come over onto hers on her lap, and Taylor’s eyes flew open in surprise. She looked down and found Charlotte’s gaze on her, worried but filled with compassion. Taylor smiled at the little girl and put her arm around her to pull her closer. No, she wasn’t alone.

In minutes the preacher had taken to the pulpit for the day’s sermon, and Taylor sat up a little straighter. This was one she did not want to miss. She pulled Charlotte a little closer under her arm and drilled her attention on the preacher. She needed this.

“Thrown into the fire,” the preacher said. “These three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound and thrown into a furnace like kindling. I want you, today, to take a look at a couple of details in this passage. First of all, there was a fire. They weren’t making it up in their heads. They weren’t making too much of the situation. There really was a king, bent on their destruction, and there really was a fire.

“I want you to notice also that God did not put out the fire,” the preacher said. “When Jesus was in the boat, He calmed the storm. The storm stopped, and that’s what we want, what we pray for—for the storms around us to stop. But that’s not what happens here. In fact, it says that the king had the fire turned up seven notches. Now we all know in the Bible, the number seven is not random. Seven is the number that represents the eternal—Heaven, yes. And hell. And this fire, this unquenchable blaze was turned up seven notches. It was so hot in fact, that the guards who threw these men into the fire were consumed by it.

“And yet… yet… after they are thrown in, the king himself looks on and is amazed that not only have they not died, they are walking around in the fire, unharmed and unbound even. Get that? God did not take them out of the fire. God did not even stop the fire. What God did was go down into the fire with them. He was there with them in the fire.

“It’s like the line in the Apostles Creed that so many people get wrong. The line says, ‘He descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again.’ ‘He descended into hell.’ Now people object to that line. Why would God purposefully send Jesus into hell? Hell is punishment. Hell is damnation. Hell is eternal, unquenchable fire. Why would God send Jesus to hell?

“Well, right here, in this passage, we have our answer. Jesus went into hell, He braved the fires of hell, not so He could be punished but so He could walk with us in our hell and so that He could be our way out. In fact, I think that is one of the goals of the cross. Jesus was hung on a cross. He took on our sins. He was put to death. At the time, there was no getting to Heaven. At the time, death meant… death. The end. It was over. Listen to this: ‘because of Adam’s sin, death entered the world.’ Death, hell, and the grave—those were the outcroppings of sin entering into the world through Adam. And Jesus hung on a cross and died, so he could go through sin, through death, to the dead—to hell, into the unquenchable fire, not to stop the fire, but to rescue us from it.

“The question then is not, can He or even will He. He already has. The question lies not in His faithfulness, but in our faith. Do we think to bring Him with us into our fires? Do we believe that even in our darkest hell, He will be there if we cling to Him? That doesn’t mean the fire won’t come. It doesn’t mean the fire won’t be hot. It doesn’t mean that evil won’t look like it has the upper hand in our lives. It means, when evil steps