Devotional Thought for the Day:

16 The three men replied, “Your Majesty, we don’t need to defend ourselves. 17 The God we worship can save us from you and your flaming furnace. 18 But even if he doesn’t, we still won’t worship your gods and the gold statue you have set up.” Daniel 3:16-18 CEV

Dost thou feel that all thy desires are satisfied in Jesus, and that thou hast no want now, but to know more of him, and to have closer fellowship with him? Then come continually to the fountain, and take of the water of life freely. Jesus will never think you take too much, but will ever welcome you, saying, “Drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.”

2652 The Holy Spirit is the living water “welling up to eternal life”3 in the heart that prays. It is he who teaches us to accept it at its source: Christ. Indeed in the Christian life there are several wellsprings where Christ awaits us to enable us to drink of the Holy Spirit. (694)

Prayer is no illusion. God’s will and ours really do touch and interact in prayer, not in the way that a human father’s and son’s do, but in the way that the divine Father’s and Son’s do. The ultimate dignity of prayer lies in the astonishing fact that through prayer we share in the very life of the eternal Trinity.

I’ve often wondered about the confidence the three men had in God. As I’ve wondered about it, I’ve also heard the same question of these willing martyrs and those who have proven the words, that they were willing to die rather than worship some other God. Those questions and comments usually run this way,

“Pastor, what those martyrs did was amazing, I don’t think I could ever handle that!” Or, “Pastor, I would fail if that was my test, does that mean I am not saved?”

I think we see the confidence the men had, and feel like far less faithful people. We struggle when the government says we can’t worship in the buildings God dedicated for that purpose, We struggle when persecution means we don’t like it when people don’t agree with us.

So how could we walk into a furnace, confident that God was with us, whether we bake, broil, or simple dance and sing?

I think the context is important, what the people around the king wanted to take from them was the most important thing in their lives.

Their time with God. Their time of prayer and adoration and meditation. Their time of being reassured of His presence, of His love, of His promises. Far from home, this is what God them through each day.

That is why Spurgeon talks about drinking in Christ, and why the Catholic Catechism talks of the Spirit facilitating our new life of which Christ is the source! And Dubay’s incredible thought that in prayer we not only let God share in our lives, we share in the life of the Trinity. (This is why I describe the liturgy as a dance – that the prayer and meditation of a liturgical church service is simply a sacramental prayer.

This isn’t a do this, and you will gain the confidence to be a witness of God. It isn’t a way to exercise and strengthen our muscles of faith. That confidence grows stronger, not by our effort, but simply because of the joy we know, as we find peace in God’s presence. That presence of God means so much that we would allow nothing to supplant it, we would desire to have it more, to share it with those around us.

This isn’t an illusion, a coping mechanism, a opiate for those who struggle in life. Prayer is the greatest reality we can encounter. For through it, even the most heated moments, can become a time of joyous fellowship… one that hopefully will amaze those we pray for who persecute us… to the point they begin to praise God.

C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).

Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 637.

Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 148.