Psalm 119:83
For I have become like wineskin in smoke….

As I read I find that trials and troubles can be a good thing or a bad thing.
A wineskin hanging over the warm smoke from a fire can help perfect the wine within, yet, left in the smoke too long the wineskin becomes brittle, inflexible, and no good. A ruined wineskin will ruin the wine within.

There are troubles and trials in life. With unwavering faith in God, these trials can make us a better person. Without faith, these trials can leave us wounded, hopeless, and inflexible to change.

We all have a breaking point. Don’t be like a wineskin left in the smoke of the fire too long.

I love thinking about the resolve and faith of the three Hebrew boys. They walked with God and had unwavering faith. They refused to worship any other god other than The one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even when confronted with a fiery furnace they would not bow down. Their “wineskins” cast into the fiery furnace to kill the “wine” within had no effect on them. They survived because they declared that they would not bow down to any God but their God.

By not bowing down they didn’t have to go into that fiery furnace alone. When we walk through the fire with faith we do not walk alone.
Three Hebrew boys were cast in the fire but there were four “wineskins” seen loosed and walking around in the fire and one was like unto the Son of God. They went into the fire alone but they weren’t in the fire alone. God was with them and when they were brought out of the 🔥 not a hair on their head was singed and they didn’t even have the smell of smoke on them.

I suggest that after that their faith was deepened and the “wine” within made more perfect.

Thank God that whatever we face today we don’t have to face it alone and whatever it is, God will use it to work a perfect work within us.

I feel the “wine” within my “wineskin” has been made more pleasing because of the smoke from the fire. My affliction lasted long enough but not too long.

Thank you, Lord. I am content with my wages and love you so.

A testimony Wednesday, October 27, 2021