I was at home one Saturday in 2014 when I received a text from a colleague, through which it transpired that three senior colleagues at work had been suspended. Within 10 seconds of receiving that information, and knowing the situation that it related to – I felt God say to me “You’ll come through the fire and you’ll not get burned”. Armed with this information, I headed in to tell my wife that I thought I was going to get suspended the following week.
I also shared that information with church as I led worship the following day – asking for their prayers, assuring them that I hadn’t done anything wrong and it would be all OK, and letting them know what God had said. Sure enough, as I went into work the following week, I was met with shortly after starting to be informed that I was going to be suspended.
When I led worship the following week I updated church and told them what had happened, and then during that week that followed, I wrote this song, singing it for the first time the next Sunday. It was really important that the promises that we sung about were declared whilst going through the issue, not when everything turned out fine at the end. This song really connected with people because they saw that it came out of the confidence that God was true to His word – and we didn’t need to see the evidence of it directly in this situation because we’d seen it before and could take our confidence from that.
I was off work for 10 weeks in total – possibly some of the best 10 weeks of my life. I had chance to focus on the things I enjoyed – it became a sabbatical rather than a suspension. But the thing that kept me going throughout was that there was a fire around me – but I had been promised that I would come through it without getting burned. For those who were around in church since it was written – each time we sang it, they were able to connect with the story that sits behind it – and it helped us to each face whatever our fire, valley, raging river with a faith that God is who He says he is.
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11 years ago