 One of the stories that I love in the Bible is the story of the three Hebrew boys when they stood up against the king Who made a big deal about worshiping an idol and he said if you don't worship this idol I will throw you into the furnace of fire And the three Hebrew boys they dare they dare to defy the king by not worshiping his idol And of course his pride was injured injured so deeply that he caused the furnace that they were supposed to be thrown into to be kindled and to be Raised in the temperature by seven times now. I don't know logically and I had no idea how they can do that in those days It's one thing when you take fire and make it twice hotter Seven times hotter is really really hot It was so hot that the strongest man of Babylon threw the Hebrew boys into the fire and the strongest man Died trying to throw the guys into the fire. That's how hot it was And so you can imagine these guys are going into the fire the guys who threw them already died and as they are there The Bible says God comes in their midst with them Their faith didn't protect them from the fire It didn't remove the fire and It didn't remove God The idea that many times we have about faith is that if I have great faith, I will not have fire in my life And if I have fire in my life that means I don't have great faith and that is not true An amazing part is three boys are there and the King notices he's watching at the furnace and he's seeing them walking in the fire The fire is still there, but they're not dead. See real faith is not when you can avoid the furnace It's when you don't die in the furnace Other people even come close and they die in it They become so bruised broken and beaten by it and you are in it walking and not that it's comfortable Not that it's your vacation, but you are not dead by it You're not defeated by it and you are not defined by it. That is real faith And so we see these three Hebrew boys They walk around in this thing and the Bible says the king is looking and he says I Didn't we throw the three guys. He said I see the fourth man and he is like the son of God He is like the son of God and then he calls them out and they come out and the amazing part was Not only that they didn't stay in the fire Not only they didn't die in the fire, but when they came out of the fire, they didn't smell like the fire Real faith is not when you skip fire real fire real faith is when you don't die in it Don't stay in it and don't smell like it. That's what real faith is when you go through hell But you don't die in it You don't stay in it and you don't smell like it when you get out of it We all know people who didn't die in it, but they still smell like it It's been ten years now But you come close to them and it smells like somebody some did something to them because their attitude portrays I've been hurt their attitude portrays. You know what you gotta give me space I know it's been ten years, but you gotta give me space Why because I've been hurt and abused you still smell like fire Faith does not cause you to avoid the fire faith causes you not to die in it Not to stay in it and not to smell like it when you get out of it That is faith because somebody say amen and we need more of that What I love about Jesus is that when I go through fire Jesus doesn't necessarily kill the fire when he comes and sometimes you would think why wouldn't he kill the fire? He's the living water fire living water water kills the fire Simple. He's the light. I got some darkness should dark light to move the darkness But that's your little theological logic doesn't always work in life. How many figured that out? Sometimes you have Jesus and you still have fire. What does he remove if he's still with me and he doesn't remove the fire? Before Jesus removes fire He usually first removes the fear removes the fear For many people it is not the fire that kills them It's the fear When you what is fear of fear of what? Then what you're in right now will never change Then what you're in right now will never stop and what you're in right now you will never Overcome that fear many times paralyzes people. No wonder David says in Psalm 23 He says the following the dough I walked through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear No evil for you are with me mark this Until you don't fear in your valley. You can't walk through your valley The reason people get stuck in their fire is when when they get into it fear Paralyzes them saying this is how it's going to be always