Isaiah 43:1-3, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God”
This picture was a Christmas gift for Courtney this year, and it also serves as a prayer for and reminder of the Lord’s faithfulness to us both as she and I move into 2019….I shared it yesterday on social media in hopes that it would also be an encouragement to others. In a really wonderful instance of the whole body of Christ building itself up, someone took this picture and combined it with some other content to create a blog post that the Lord used to build my faith and hope in him. You can read the post here: https://www.breadforbeggars.com/2019/01/when-you-pass-through-the-waters-a-powerful-image-and-prayer/
As far as the picture goes, you can see that the woman is passing through fire and water, and yet that the drowning force of the flood and consuming flames of the fire have been borne by Christ (in His hand and in the crown of thorns made of flames). The idea there is that, though we DO pass through these things (note that Isaiah says when, not if) though we do pass through them, the damning power of our sufferings has been removed….they are no longer an expression of God “against us,” rather, they are only ever and always expressions of God “for us” (Romans 8:28, 32), and this is because all of the “against us” of God was swallowed into Christ on the cross. Because of this, then, I tried to show how the fires and the waters of our sufferings actually serve to create a context for our communion with the Lord….the Lord who has borne—and overcome—ALL the griefs and sorrows that 2019 (and every other year) may hold. IN all these things we will be more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
