What the World Puts On

So Sunday me and Mo Shearc were listening to a message form Dr. Adrian Rogers, and he was talking about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the spirit of the Anti-Christ.
and he said something that caught my attention.

When the unbending three were cast into the fire and good ole' King Nebby looked into the furnace and saw them walking about freely because their binding ropes had been burned off, he was amazed. (not to mention that there were FOUR in the fire, not three... but on with the point) When 'rach, 'shach, and 'nego came out their clothes weren't singed and they didn't even smell of smoke.

And then Dr. Rogers said, "The fire only burned off of them what the World put on them."

Wow.

That is what happens to us in the metaphorical sense. Christ only burns away from us, those things the World has put on us. (or things we've let the World put on us.)

Which is great! Except when those things that the World has put on us are things we enjoy and like, and then it feels like the Fire is burning us.

I mean the World doesn't literally bind us in ropes and shove us into fires, but it does, through our allowance, bind and bog us down in sin and unhealthy habits. Which in turn causes the refining Fires to bring us into a reflection of Christ.

I know that I, and those around me, sometimes feel that God is attacking and trying to change who we are and that causes us great pain. But really He is burning away all that is not us, so that we can be who we truly are, and who we are meant to be.

The fires aren't meant to change us into someone else, but meant to burn away all that we've accumulated that keeps us from being who we really are and who we are truly meant to be.