Shane and Shane on the Fiery Furnace

I've had a song stuck in my head that I've known for a few years but am reminded of the profundity of its message. Below are an excerpt and two videos. The excerpt is part of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The first video below it is of Shane Barnard and Shane Everett explaining their fresh encounter with this old story. The second video is the song itself with lyrics. It is renewing to my personal faith experience to be reminded that even these biblical heroes were able to claim God's power boldly in the face of certain death but also to say, "But even if He does not..." our faith in Him is not changed. Enjoy.

¹⁶ Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ 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.” (Daniel 3:16-18)

Beacon Article on Covenant

Greetings church family,

As the new year is well underway, I am experiencing anew that life’s pace is rarely a respecter of the calendar. There are a few times a year society’s pace slows or quickens, but circumstances have not given us a celebratory break to acknowledge the successful completion of 2011. In ministry this takes shape in the form of weddings, funerals, crises, births, jubilant praises and desperate cries for divine help. The needs of our community and our own needs for spiritual sustenance continue in full force. But as I experience these things as a still relatively new pastor, I’m reminded of something else that is unaffected by circumstances.

This past week in our Disciple I Bible Study class, our theme was COVENANT. We read 35 chapters of scripture that all had the common thread of God’s covenant with humanity. We learned that covenants are not like contracts, which often have loopholes or an escape clause. Ancient near eastern covenants were made with blood and sacrifices. And they typically required at least one person’s life for restitution if broken. All through the Bible we see God as a Covenant-Maker and Covenant-Keeper. In April we will celebrate the ultimate expression of covenant faithfulness as we remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, whose life was given in order to fulfill the covenant between God and humanity that we have been breaking repeatedly since our first days.

I encourage you this week as you prepare to enter Lent (which begins on Wednesday, Feb. 22) to open your Bible and pray – read about, praise, give thanks, and cry out to the only One who has never broken covenant and never will. And know that because of His faithfulness, our unpredictable circumstances and ever-changing lives have an infinitely reliable and constant opponent. And He wins.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Jonathan

Below are the lyrics to a song we sometimes sing in our contemporary services called “Your Grace Is Enough” by Matt Maher. He writes about God’s covenant and that God’s grace is sufficient for us because He keeps His covenant. Feel free to read it this week (or sing it!) as a reminder of who God is and why we praise Him.

Your Grace Is Enough

Great is Your faithfulness O God

You wrestle with the sinner’s restless heart

You lead us by still waters into mercy

And nothing can keep us apart

So remember Your people

Remember Your children

Remember Your promise O God

Your grace is enough

Your grace is enough

Your grace is enough for me

Great is Your love and justice God of Jacob

You use the weak to lead the strong

You lead us in the song of Your salvation

And all Your people sing along

Yeah Your grace is enough

Heaven reaches out to us

Your grace is enough for me

God I sing Your grace is enough

I’m covered in Your love

Your grace is enough for me for me

CCLI Song No. 4477026

© 2003 spiritandsong.com | Thankyou Music | (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)

Matt Maher

For use solely with the SongSelect Terms of Use. All rights Reserved. www.ccli.com

CCLI License No. 975213

Divine Metaphors

As I begin the new year I look back over my first full teaching experience as a pastor - an Advent study on Adam Hamilton's book, The Journey. One thing that sticks out as I reflect back on this study as a whole is this: our Lord had no shortage of divine metaphors in His story upon which to draw.


Jesus was born in Bethlehem but raised in Nazareth. Both of these are tied to prophecy. Isaiah 11:1 talks about a "shoot" or "branch" coming out of the defeated stump of Jesse, the line of King David. This word for "shoot" or "branch" is the Hebrew word netzer, which traditionally is where Nazareth gets its name. So Jesus' hometown was a place of no seeming worth, but a place named for the hope of the Messiah! Bethlehem was a small town, too, but one of great significance. Jews of the time were quite aware of the prophecy of Micah 5:2 which tells of a messianic ruler coming out of Bethlehem. But that's not where the significance stops. Bethlehem in Hebrew means "House of Bread." Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem, a feeding trough where the creatures of God feed. He would later call Himself the "Bread of Life" in John 6:35 and then would refer to a loaf of Passover bread as His body, given and broken for the sins of the world (Luke 22:19).


Our Lord certainly had no shortage of divine metaphors upon which to draw as He pointed from His life to the very essence and activity of God the Father. This makes me wonder what divine metaphors in my own life or the lives of those around me I might be missing, metaphors pointing to the presence and movement of God like giant billboards though I remain unaware.

An Observation on Prophets

Biblical prophets are first acquainted with their own evil before they can say “Thus saith the Lord.” In our day, some prophets like the ego trip of “thus saith the Lord” without first saying, “Woe is me. I am undone! For I am a man of unclean lips and I speak to a people of unclean lips” ~Isaiah. We must first be fully acquainted and willing to face our own evil before being able to humbly submit to God whereby we may be given a confidence in the Spirit to speak His truth.

Forgiving and Forgetting

Hebrews 10:15-18:

"And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,

 'This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws upon their heart,
and on their mind I will write them,' (Jeremiah 31:33)

   He then says,

 'And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.' (Jer. 31:34)

 Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin."

Too many times we contrast forgiving and forgetting, do we not, as if God exhorts us to forgive while not expecting us to forget. I find it blessedly intriguing that His own model of forgiveness is not such.

Limiting Speech

I am a talker. I actually have a small level of what I would go so far as to call anxiety when I fear not getting out of my mouth the finished product of what is in my head in conversation. But it hit me today that there are crucial moments, such as when a surgeon yells out a life-saving instruction, when a military leader says "go" or "fire," or when a parent yells "STOP!" to a child walking obliviously into the trajectory of an oncoming vehicle. In fact, there are crucial hours, a whole series of moments such as an entire surgery or the hours Houston spends communicating to astronauts during a crisis oriented shuttle mission. During these crucial moments brave people give up sleep, emotional impulses, and instinctive preferences in order to keep going in a life-saving or even world-changing way.

But this is not my normal daily experience. Many times throughout my day I desire to operate beyond limitations - some natural and some that should be self-imposed - in order to waste energy and words on what is not a crucial moment.

The Missionary Power of Prayer

I read a quote on Twitter the other night by E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973), the great 20th century Methodist missionary to India. It read as follows:

@E_StanleyJones "Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world."


As a missionary of the gospel of Jesus, Jones had a clear understanding that the activity of God in the world flowed out the nature of God being in mission to save the world. Thus, the life of the child of God and disciple of Jesus is to flow out of union with this missionary God. So, as Jones states, prayer becomes commission. Communing with God leads to being commissioned by God. As we dwell in the presence of God seeking His heart, His mind, and His will, we end up encountering the One who is redeeming us and those around us and relentlessly pursuing the lost sheep (Matthew 18:12-14). And out of this quiet dwelling in God and with God, we yield ourselves to the power of His Spirit to move through and among us in such a way that "the spiritual machinery of the world" is turned. Hallelujah! Prayer leads to action - both by God and ourselves.


I am challenged by the words of this missionary saint that we have but one thing to do in order to shake the spiritual realm with the power of the divine Creator and Savior of the world - pray. And out of this seemingly passive action, all other actions of eternal consequence find their purpose and motivation.


Let us pray.