God does not like pride. In fact, the Bible says, “The Lord detests all the proud of heart” (Proverbs 16:5a). This is not just a one-time statement against pride; the Bible says over and over again how much God does not like pride. In the New Testament, James says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

God actually opposes people who are proud.

I’m not talking about taking pride in your work or having a healthy self-esteem. I’m talking about conceit, the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one’s importance — the sin of pride.

God detests this.

And that’s kind of strange because, in our world, that kind of pride is seen as maybe annoying but hardly something that might be a fatal character flaw. Visit your local bookstore and browse through the self-help section. See how many books you can find that will help you develop the quality of humility.

I’ve seen people disciplined by their church for sexual misconduct or financial misdeeds. I’ve never seen anyone called on the carpet by their church leaders for having a prideful spirit.

And yet…which causes more problems in the church: financial impropriety or pride? Pride is absolutely lethal to having a thriving relationship with God.

Godliness and pride are mutually exclusive.

I say all of this to set us up to look at what happens to King Nebuchadnezzar beginning in Daniel 4. The king goes mad. God actually drives him out of his castle and basically says, “If you’re going to act like an animal, go all the way with that act!” And all of this happens for one reason. That reason is given in the final sentence of the chapter:

“Those who walk in pride he is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37b).

One other thought on this whole furnace business of Daniel 3: Do you ever wonder what they did while they were in there?

They were tied up so that they had to be carried to the furnace, but when King Nebuchadnezzar looked in there, they were walking around. And there was a fourth person in there — probably Jesus.

I wonder what he said to them. I bet he called them by their old names — the Jewish ones. I wonder if he told them how everyone up in heaven had been watching to see what they were going to do. I wonder if he told them how proud their Father was of them. I wonder if he told them that 2,500 years later some guy on the other side of the world would be writing about them on his blog.

I wonder if they asked him, “What’s a blog?”

I wonder if he told them that followers of God who face persecution because of their beliefs would remember them and be encouraged just thinking of their strength of character.

I bet I know what they said to him: “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Anne Lamott says there are really only two kinds of prayer that she really knows: (1) Help me! Help me! Help me! and (2) Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

I wonder if they gathered together on the anniversary of the event, built a little bonfire and remembered their experience together. I wonder if they told their grandkids the story. I wonder if they ever pulled those clothes out and tried them on — moth-eaten, full of holes and several sizes too small to fit anymore.

I wonder if, when the King called them to come out of the fire, there was any desire to stay right where they were.

And I wonder what life would be like for all of us if we stopped asking God to deliver us from the furnace and started asking him to meet us there.

Odd, isn’t it?

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego want to be delivered from the furnace.

But once they get in there, they find out it’s the safest place on earth for them to be.

How many divine encounters have I missed out on because I avoided the discomfort and pain of a place where God was waiting to meet me?

The danger — especially for those of us who live in these times of unprecedented affluence and wealth — is that we might make God into some kind of cosmic vending machine. If we put our quarter in (in the form of prayer, Bible study, church attendance, etc.), the candy bar better come out (in the form of answered prayer, blessings, etc.). If it does not, I’m liable to kick the machine to bits and walk away in a huff.

So, the question I must ask myself in light of this story in Daniel 3 is: I’m I putting the quarter in just to get the candy bar? Is the whole thing set up as a vending machine in the first place?

Relationships don’t tend to work very well when they are approached in this way.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego make a tremendous statement of faith in Daniel 3. They affirm that the God we serve is able to do amazing things — beyond anything we can ask or imagine.

But what they say next is arguably one of the greatest statements in the Bible. It reveals a depth of trust that I wish I had and hope to achieve one day. Here’s what they say:

“But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Daniel 3:18).

Even if he does not. We know he can; that’s not even a question. Of course he can. He has before. But even if he does not….

We all have dreams, hopes and aspirations. There are things about which we’ve all said to God, “Okay, God, I’m stuck here. You’ve got to help me. I know you can, so anytime you’re ready….”

But what if he doesn’t?

Is my devotion to God tied to what he will do for me?

If he doesn’t deliver the way I thought he would, will my devotion to him dry up?

Have you ever thought through THAT situation — you know the one — and said to God, “I know you can do this, but even if you don’t, I want you to know that I’m not going to leave this faith, I’m not going to bow my knee to something else”?

Can you say with Job, “Even if he kills me, I’ll still trust him”?

Wow, that’s a hard call. I want to focus on his ability to do great things for me. I don’t want to think that it might serve some higher purpose for him not to come to my rescue.

Several hundred years after Daniel and his friends, another man found himself in a life-or-death situation. And he, like Daniel and his friends, prayed to God. He said, “Surely, there’s got to be a way out of this. There’s got to be another way, an easier way.”

He prayed that prayer so fervently that his sweat came like blood.

But he finished that prayer by saying, “God, I know you’re able to come up with another way, but even if you don’t — I won’t walk away from you or my commitment to do your will.”

And later that day, he joined with Job in saying, “Even if he kills me, I’ll still trust him.”

I know God is able. I think most people reading this blog believe God is able. That’s not the question.

The question is: Have you ever thought through your worst case scenario and said, “Even if he doesn’t…”?

Most of the people who frequent this blog could tell you a story about a time when the odds were long and the forecast was dark. It didn’t look good. In fact, it looked downright awful.

And then God mysteriously and miraculously came through!

The doctors were baffled. Your neighbors couldn’t explain it. Your friends and relatives just laughed and hugged and danced and cried. It was amazing how God came through with just what was needed at exactly the right time.

We love stories like that. We ought to celebrate those kinds of stories, repeating them over and over to our children and our grandchildren. Stories of God’s deliverance produce in us the kind of faith we need to survive life on this earth. They remind us that the God we serve is able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than all we can ask or even imagine.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego make this tremendous statement of faith in the face of considerable odds. The King has just summoned them and makes it very clear to them that they must obey his will or be killed. Their response is classic:

“O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:16b-17).

I do not think it is possible for us to meditate on this statement enough: “The God we serve is able”.

The God we serve is the God who gave a child to a barren couple who trusted him.
The God we serve is the God who brought 10 plagues down on the Egyptians.
The God we serve is the God who split the Red Sea in two.
The God we serve is the God who provided manna in the wilderness.
The God we serve is the God who crushed the walls of Jericho.
The God we serve is the God who did all these things and more, and he has not lost one ounce of strength.

He is able to heal, deliver, restore, repair, forgive, redeem and do all sorts of things we cannot even imagine.

Today, let this be your statement: The God we serve is able!

I have technology that allows me to see when someone lands on my website. I can see where they’ve come from and what they do while they’re here. I can even tell where their Internet Provider is. It gives me a general picture, though not a specific one.

So, I could see it coming. I knew what was going on. Someone typed my name in a search engine. They didn’t spell it correctly, but the internet is very forgiving when it comes to spelling. They found my blog and began to read every single entry I’ve ever posted.

Talk about someone with a lot of time on their hands!

And then they started searching for specific things. They searched my blog for the word “baptism”. Then they searched for “community church”.

Okay, I can see where this is going.

But then it got personal; they searched the word “father”.

I thought this guy was trying to dig up dirt on me (and maybe he was), but when he typed that word in I started to wonder if this wasn’t about me but was about my dad.

My father is Dr. J.J. Turner for those of you who don’t know. He is a man of God, a man I respect greatly, a man of learning and a man of integrity. He has been the greatest single influence on my life, and I would do just about anything for him. So, when you pick a fight with him, you’ve got one with me, too.

Well, “jc” finally found a couple of things objectionable enough to comment on. And this was his comment: “What does your Daddy think about all of this? Isn’t he a known Gospel preacher for the Church of Christ? jc”.

This comment was made in response to my belief that closed- or circular-scholarship has bred a fair amount of cult-like practices among some people in the Churches of Christ. I made that statement along with the idea that this is not the case among most members or leaders in the Churches of Christ. And I applauded the efforts of men like Rubel Shelly, Mike Cope and Randy Harris.

So, “jc” wants to know what my Daddy thinks about this.

JC, whoever you are, I actually called my dad and talked to him about this. He is a grown man, and so am I. He is a man of faith, and so am I. He is a student of the Bible, and so am I. We agree on many, many things — most matters theological. We disagree over a few things and have agreed that none of the things over which we disagree amount to salvation issues.

His suggestion was that if you have questions about what he thinks, go ask him.

My suggestion is that if you do muster up the courage to have that conversation — pack a lunch.

Last year I was speaking at a retreat and found myself without a book to read. That is a very terrible thing indeed for me, because I am not always good at meeting new people and mingling with them. I much prefer to hole up with a book and come out when it’s time to speak.

So, I was a little unnerved at the thought of having to go a full weekend without the comfort I find in books. And that’s when God miraculously intervened, and I found a book on my nightstand. It was titled THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht.

This little book contains the most bizarre advice ever assembled: How to escape from quick-sand; how to hot-wire a car; how to fend off a shark; how to escape from a mountain lion; how to jump from a building into a dumpster; how to deliver a baby in a taxicab; how to survive if your parachute fails to open. Bizarre and fascinating, this book contains actual lists of what you can and should do if you ever find yourself in a life-or-death situation. Here’s what the author says in the Preface:

“The principle behind this book is a simple one: You just never know.

“You never really know what curves life will throw at you, what is lurking around the corner, what is hovering above, what is swimming beneath the surface. You never know when you might be called upon to perform an act of extreme bravery and to choose life or death with your own actions.

“But when you are called, we want to be sure that you know what to do. And that is why we wrote this book.”

You just never know.

A young college graduate gets sick and can’t seem to shake it. He starts experiencing double-vision and night-sweats, goes to the doctor and discovers that he has Hodgkin’s Disease. You just never know.

A wife and mother comes home to find her furniture out on the lawn and her husband in the back of a police squad car — he’s been arrested for embezzling money from his company, and they’ve been evicted from their home. You just never know.

Fifty years ago last month, a team of missionaries decided to take the gospel to a group of people in the jungle of eastern Ecuador. After several friendly encounters, five of the missionaries were found hacked to death by the very people they were trying to reach. You just never know.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had no idea what life was going to throw at them. They probably thought life was going to be a certain way, but it didn’t turn out the way they thought it would. Things seemed to be going pretty well. They’d been promoted and enjoyed some measure of influence and power in their world.

And then things changed all of a sudden, and they found themselves in the middle of a Worst-Case Scenario.

What do you do when life throws you a curveball? When the parachute fails to open, and your worst nightmare turns into a reality?

You never know when you might be called to do something heroic or sacrificial. But when you are called, God wants to be sure that you know what to do. And that is why he wrote his book.

It may sound odd for someone like me to say, but sometimes I think we may know the Bible too well.

Here’s what I mean: when we know the stories ultimately have a happy ending, we tend to rush to that happy ending — skipping over the important bits in the middle. Abraham and Isaac. David and Goliath. Esther, Mordechai and Haman. Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail.

Certainly, this is the case with Daniel 3 — the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

The problem with reading these stories now is that most of us know how they end, and we want to speed our way through them to get to that happy ending. God delivers; his people are delivered; start the party.

But life doesn’t happen like that. In life, you can only go one verse at a time, and you don’t always know how this particular episode is going to turn out.

That’s the title of Louie Giglio’s latest book: I Am Not…But I Know I AM. And it’s a fitting caption for what happens in the last half of Daniel 2.

The King has had a bad dream, and he’s ordered his advisors to tell him what the dream was and what it meant. They reply that such a request is hopeless — no one can do something like that except the gods. And, unfortunately, the gods don’t live down here on earth where we can ask them.

Daniel and his friends pray to God, and God reveals the dream and its meaning to Daniel sometime during the night.

Daniel goes to the king, and the king asks, “Can you tell me my dream and its meaning?”

Daniel — believe it or not — says, “No.”

Actually, what he says is better than that:

“Daniel replied, ‘No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (Daniel 2:27-28a).

Later on, he’ll say, “This mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than other living men” (v. 30).

Well, if Daniel didn’t get the revelation because he’s smarter or wiser than the other guys, why did he get it? I think he got it because he asked.

See, the king said, “I am in charge. I am the center of the universe. I am unable to sleep.”

The other wise men said, “No one can do this except the gods, and they don’t live around here. So, it’s no use asking.”

Daniel said, “I am not smart enought to figure this out, but I know the one who is.”

Here’s what the back of Louie’s book says:

I am not but God knows my name.
I am not but he has pursued me in his love.
I am not but I know the creator of the universe.
I am not but I have been invited into his story.
I am not but I know I AM.