Heaven Rules Smakprov

The Deliverance We Need Most

Why do you think God preserved stories in the Bible like that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and their deliverance from the fiery furnace? Or like Daniel and his deliverance from the lions’ den? Did He do it to leave the impression that He will always rush into any problem we face and whisk us out of it so that we’re left untouched?

I don’t think your life experiences and mine would bear that out. We do live under God’s roof and His rule, but trouble can surely get through the door. And sometimes, it seems, it comes to stay, no matter how fervently we pray for deliverance.

But the deliverance we need most—as a right-sized view of God makes clear to us—is to be rescued from God’s righteous wrath for our sin. That’s the fiery furnace, the mouth of the hungry lion, that not even death can enable us to escape. And that judgment is something we all deserve.

But God in His goodness, mercy, and grace—God, who alone has the right and rule to do it—has given us a Deliverer: Jesus Christ. And these stories in Daniel, written many years before the appearance of Jesus on earth, point us toward this good news of the gospel, apart from which none of us can ever be saved.

Daniel’s story, like every story, shows both our need for a Savior and God’s faithfulness in providing us salvation. And your story—my story, too—takes us right to His throne.

He wins. He saves. He rules.

Heaven rules.

And so we endure because He’s already rescued us. We cling to faith because He’s already promised us sight. We pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10) because we know what’s being done in heaven: God’s will, in God’s time, in God’s eternal victory. And because of Christ, by faith, we are living in that victory already, even as we wait and watch and pray here in this broken world.

—Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

Questions:

• Does the reminder of your salvation in Jesus give you a different perspective on your earthly suffering?
• When are you most aware of your need for God? In those times, let the truth of the gospel and the promise that Heaven rules bring comfort to your heart.