WILL was a boy who grew up in the coal mining country. When he left school he got a job at one of the great iron works nearby. It wasn’t easy for him to live as a Christian and to stand up for his Saviour amid the rough men and boys working all around him; his manner of life condemned their sinful ways. Will sought strength from the Lord and bore their persecutions quietly, but at last they resolved to put a stop once for all to his Christian testimony that was a rebuke to them. They did a horrible thing-some of them put him right in front of one of the huge blast furnaces, and then they stood around, threatening to keep him there until he would say some wicked words they told him. But Will was steadfast, until at last one more merciful than the rest rescued him from his tormentors. He was in bed some days after that cruel trial, and one day a Christian minister asked him, “What did you feel when you were in front of that terrible fire?”
“I never felt in my life that Jesus was so near to me,” answered Will.
Will never forgot that experience and a sense of the Lord’s love deepened in his soul.
Has He not said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee"?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will never cease to thank the Lord for that experience of being thrown into the burning fiery furnace. How wonderful to have the companionship of the Son of God in any trial we may be called upon to pass through!
May the Lord Himself help us to be faithful, dear young Christian.
ML-05/22/1966