Good morning, my brothers! It’s easy to trust God when the answer goes our way. But what happens when the furnace stays hot, the field stays empty, and He still asks us to trust? Let’s go! 4-min, 58-sec read.
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I was in the middle of a very difficult season with someone I’m very close to, and Thad Faulk came to talk through it with me.
Thad had followed one of my mentors, Dr. Bill Bennett, as president of Mentoring Men for the Master. He’s a friend, a brother in Christ, and a man I admire greatly. He’d also walked through something very close to what I was facing. That’s why I was there.
After he told me how he got through his own situation, I came back with a pile of questions and concerns. He stopped me.
“Will, I think you trust God. But I’m not sure you confidently trust Him. And there’s a big difference.”
He was right.
The Trust That Costs Us Nothing
Most of us are pretty good at trusting God when the math already works.
We trust Him with the bill we can cover. The test that came back clean. The kid who’s making good decisions. That kind of trust doesn’t ask anything of us. It’s agreement, not surrender.
Confident trust is a different animal. It shows up when nothing in front of us makes sense, when we can see the next step and nothing past it.
Confident trust is built on who God is, His unchanging character, His bottomless love.
Thad wasn’t questioning my faith that day. He was challenging its depth.
Three Men and a Furnace
You know the story. In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar builds his statue, the music plays, everybody bows. Three Hebrew men don’t. The furious king gives them one more chance and tells them what’s waiting if they refuse. A blazing furnace.
Here’s their answer.
If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.
We remember the furnace. We remember the rescue. Most of us have read right past the first four words of verse 18.
But even if he does not...
They had no promise about the outcome. None. What they had was a settled conviction about God’s character. They’d already decided who He was in case He didn’t do the thing they were hoping for.
Read their answer again and notice what’s missing. There’s no excuse in it. They could have found a good one. It’s only ten minutes. Everybody else is bowing.
Trust says God is able. Confident trust says God is good, even if He doesn’t.
The Field With Nothing In It
Habakkuk gets there from the other direction. He’s a prophet staring at ruin.
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
That isn’t a bad quarter. That’s every source of income, gone.
And he says yet.
Notice he isn’t pretending. He doesn’t talk himself into believing the barn is full. He counts what’s missing, one empty thing at a time, and says yet anyway.
Confident trust never asks us to lie about our circumstances. It asks us to be honest about them and about God at the same time.
Both passages hinge on the same little turn. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say, but even if. Habakkuk says, yet I will. Confident trust always has one of those somewhere in it. The easy kind never needs one.
Your Furnace. Your Fig Tree.
What’s your furnace this morning?
Maybe it’s the son who hasn’t returned a call in a year. The business that won’t turn, no matter how many hours you put in. A marriage that’s polite and cold, or…over. Maybe God has clearly asked you to do something, and you’ve done the math, and obeying will cost you money, time, relationships, or the retirement you’d sketched out.
And what fig tree in your life isn’t budding? You’ve been faithful. You’ve shown up. Nothing has bloomed.
Here’s the question Thad was really asking me, and maybe the Spirit is asking us today. It isn’t “Do you believe God can?” Most of us settled that decades ago. It’s “Have you decided who He is if He doesn’t?”
Because that decision doesn’t get made in front of the furnace.
Go back two chapters in Daniel. The first stand these men ever took wasn’t in front of a fire. It was at a dinner table. They asked to be excused from the king’s food. No crowd, no flames, nobody watching.
They practiced confident trust when it was small, and nobody would have blamed them for letting it go. So when the music played, and their lives were on the line, standing wasn’t a decision they made in the moment. It was a habit they already had.
We keep waiting for the big test to prove our faith. God is building it in the small ones.
He Didn’t Keep Them Out of the Fire
He didn’t spare those men the furnace. They went in. The flames were real, and the men who threw them in died doing it.
But when the king looked into the fire, he saw four men walking around, unbound.
They went in tied up. They walked around free. The only thing the fire burned was what bound them. And the God they’d trusted was in there with them. They never asked for that. It was the thing they needed most.
He may not take you out of it, brother. He will not leave you alone in it.
Reflection
Where are you asking God for an outcome when He’s inviting you to rest in His character?
Prayer
Father, I believe You’re able. Help me trust You confidently, before I know how any of this ends. If You choose not to do what I’m asking, You’re still good, and I’m still Yours. Meet me in the fire.
Action
Name your furnace out loud to one other man this week. Not for advice. Just so someone knows where you’re standing and can stand there with you. Email me at [email protected] if you want. We’ll stand together.
-Will
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