“The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.” Proverbs 11:8
I’ve been ruminating on this verse for a few days now, particularly where it says:
“The righteous is delivered out of trouble…”
Out of.
I think sometimes I have lived as though faithfulness should mean being delivered from trouble altogether, as though walking closely with God ought to create some protected road where sorrow, uncertainty, loss, fear, and painful circumstances remain somewhere beyond the guardrail.
Scripture has never promised us that road.
Jeremiah loved God and still knew the inside of a dungeon.
He was lowered into a pit where “there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.” Jeremiah 38:6.
The three Hebrew children refused to bow before Nebuchadnezzar’s image, and their faithfulness did not cause the furnace doors to close before they reached them.
The king commanded that the furnace be heated “seven times more than it was wont to be heated,” and they were bound and thrown directly into the fire.
Yet when Nebuchadnezzar looked inside, he rose in astonishment.
“Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt.”
Then came those remarkable words:
“and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” Daniel 3:25.
God had not kept them from the furnace.
He met them inside it.
That truth has become increasingly precious to me, because life has taught me that sooner or later every one of us walks into circumstances we would have chosen to avoid.
There are phone calls that change the shape of an ordinary afternoon.
There are diagnoses that divide life into before and after.
There are people we love whom we cannot protect from suffering, decisions whose consequences reach farther than expected, and seasons when the thing we prayed would pass seems determined to remain.
Trouble comes.
Jesus spoke plainly enough about that when He said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” John 16:33.
I would prefer, if I am being truthful, to have grace that keeps me from ever needing grace.
I would rather testify about the accident that almost happened, the diagnosis that turned out to be nothing, the door God closed before I ever walked through it, or the burden that disappeared quickly enough to leave my life mostly undisturbed.
Sometimes God does deliver that way, and I am deeply thankful when He does.
Yet some of the greatest manifestations of His grace are discovered after the thing we feared has already happened.
There is a kind of knowledge of God that seems to come only from the furnace.
It is difficult to explain to someone who has never needed Him there, because before the fire we can speak sincerely about His sufficiency while still possessing several earthly things upon which we are leaning.
Then one by one the supports disappear, and suddenly the verses we have quoted for years are carrying weight they never had to carry before.
“My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9.
Sufficient becomes a different word when you have reached the end of yourself.
So does sustain.
So does refuge.
So does faithful.
We discover that God can carry a person through something they were certain would destroy them, and that morning still comes after a night spent crying.
We discover that strength sometimes arrives only after our own strength has been exhausted, and somehow there is enough for the next hour, then enough for the next day.
Perhaps this is part of what it means to be delivered out of trouble.
The road may pass directly through it.
Jeremiah still had mud on him.
The Hebrew children still entered the fire.
Daniel still spent the night among lions.
Paul still bore the thorn.
Yet none of those circumstances managed to place them beyond the reach of God.
That should give tremendous courage to anyone walking through something difficult today.
The furnace can become terribly hot without becoming Godless.
In fact, some of us have known the presence of God most deeply while standing in places we once begged never to enter.
There is another thought, however, that has been pressing upon me, because reassurance about future trouble raises a very practical question about the present.
“If trouble is coming, are we spiritually prepared for it?”
That question feels especially important when I consider the kind of society in which we are living.
Ezekiel described the condition of Sodom with words that sound uncomfortably familiar:
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters.” Ezekiel 16:49.
Pride.
Fulness of bread.
Abundance of idleness.
Those conditions can make people feel remarkably secure while producing very little spiritual strength.
We have access to more comfort than most generations before us could have imagined.
Food arrives at the door.
Entertainment follows us from room to room.
Answers appear within seconds.
We can avoid boredom almost completely if we are willing to keep reaching for a screen.
Comfort itself carries no moral guilt.
I am thankful for a warm house, a full refrigerator, medicine, transportation, and every ordinary convenience God has allowed us to enjoy.
Still, comfort can make us spiritually soft if we never learn how to deny ourselves anything.
Daniel 5 gives us another picture of a civilization enjoying abundance while judgment stood almost within arm’s reach.
Belshazzar held a great feast, drinking wine from vessels that had been taken from the temple of God, and Scripture says, “They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.” Daniel 5:4.
The party continued while Babylon was falling.
That picture bothers me.
People were eating, drinking, laughing, and celebrating while the handwriting was about to appear upon the wall.
There is something spiritually dangerous about becoming so accustomed to ease that we assume ease will continue indefinitely.
We can become diligent about preparing financially for hard times while barely considering whether our souls are prepared for them.
We insure houses.
We save money.
We fill medicine cabinets.
We make plans.
All sensible things.
Yet eventually there are troubles no amount of earthly preparation can absorb.
When that day comes, what has been growing inside us?
Have we learned how to pray before desperation forces us to learn?
Do we know enough Scripture for the Word of God to rise within us when fear begins speaking loudly?
Have we practiced contentment while life was comfortable enough to give us options?
Have we learned obedience when obedience was inconvenient but relatively inexpensive?
Because a faith that has never been exercised under resistance may feel surprisingly weak when suddenly asked to carry something heavy.
I think of David before Goliath.
The giant was not David’s first experience of trusting God with something dangerous.
He had already met the lion and the bear in places where almost nobody was watching.
Those earlier battles mattered.
David told Saul, “The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” 1 Samuel 17:37.
Again that word appears.
Out.
God had already been teaching David what deliverance felt like.
Perhaps the ordinary difficulties we resent today are sometimes preparing us for burdens we cannot yet see.
We learn to trust God with the smaller fear.
We learn to obey Him when obedience costs convenience.
We learn to say no to our flesh when the appetite feels manageable.
We learn to open Scripture on ordinary mornings when nothing is wrong.
Then, when the furnace comes, we are not being introduced to God for the first time.
We already know His voice.
I do not say any of this from a place of wanting trouble.
I am perfectly content to avoid furnaces.
I have no desire to prove my faith through suffering, and I suspect most people who have endured genuine hardship would say the same.
But I do want to know that when trouble comes, I have built my life upon something capable of surviving it.
I want Scripture deeper than the verses I can quote when everything is going well, and I want prayer to be more familiar than panic.
I want enough history with God that when I cannot understand what His hand is doing, I can remember what His character has already proven.
Because trouble will eventually expose whatever we have been leaning upon.
And perhaps that is one of the mercies hidden within it.
The furnace burns away a great deal of illusion.
The Hebrew children entered bound, and Nebuchadnezzar saw them walking loose.
I have always loved that detail.
The fire that should have destroyed them burned away the ropes.
Sometimes the trouble we feared will ruin us becomes the very place where God frees us from things we did not know were binding us.
We emerge with less confidence in ourselves and considerably more confidence in Him.
That kind of deliverance cannot always be understood before the furnace.
Sometimes you have to walk out of it and look back.
“The righteous is delivered out of trouble.”
If you are in trouble today, perhaps the word out can give you enough hope for another step.
There is an out.
You may not know where it is yet.
You may not know how long the road through this season will be or what you will look like when you reach the other side.
But you are not walking through it without God.
He has met His people in pits, prisons, furnaces, lions’ dens, storms, sickrooms, and gravesides throughout all of Scripture and throughout all the centuries since.
He’s a personal God that brings His children OUT OF trouble.
And if today happens to be one of the easier seasons, perhaps use it well.
Open the Bible.
Strengthen the roots.
Learn contentment while the pantry is full.
Practice prayer before the emergency.
Walk closely with God while the road is level enough that you can see ahead.
Because eventually trouble comes to every door.
When it comes to mine, I want to know the One who will meet me there.
I want enough history with Him to recognize the fourth Man in the fire.
And when He brings me out, whatever the trial has cost, I want to be able to say that the furnace did not consume the faith He had spent years preparing.
Biblical Womanhood
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