“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you” (Isaiah 43:2, NASB).

Water and fire. Those are God’s baptism tools. What is baptism? Baptism is death. In baptism, you are buried with Christ. That’s putting to death the old self. And then we are resurrected to new life, with the life of Christ in us—His Holy Spirit life. The water and the fire are tools of death to self, so all those things in our lives (we mentioned this in the previous lesson), trials and tribulations, are for our blessing.

Those trials and tribulations are part of that fire that God sends to cleanse us. And there’s the washing of the word, one of the things we’re doing right now. We’re renewing our minds by thinking about His Word. We read His Word, and we think about His Word. We meditate on His Word, we get His Word in our hearts, and we talk about Him day and night. We share about Him, always talking about Him. But the fire—the fiery trials—those things that come after us, they are for our good. They are for our cleansing. They are not going to harm us. No evil thing can harm you. No evil thing can touch you. No evil will befall you. Whatever translation you want to use; that’s what God says to us. The fire is not going to harm you.

What happened to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fire? How did God save them? He didn’t put out the fire. The fire was still going on around them. But they were unbound and unharmed in the fire. That’s the scripture quote: they were unbound and unharmed. They were all tied up; they were bound up. Something was binding them up. They were entangled in something; some sort of death, sin, entanglement got them. They went into the fire and they were unbound. That’s where they became unbound. Because they went into the fire with Jesus.

When we have these trials, troubles…  What do people tend to do? They tend to not turn to Jesus. They tend to turn to methods of man to try to end the problem as fast as possible. And they’re missing the blessing of the trial and tribulation. You are missing the blessing if you are just trying to get out of it.

Why are we running away from God’s blessing? We run to Jesus. Anything should cause you to run to God. If anything’s causing you to run away from God, something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with your thinking. Everything should cause us to run to Him. But Jesus is with you in the fire if you’re walking with Him. Go to Jesus. That’s how you get unbound and free.