Help in the Fires

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings. 1 PETER 4:12–13

Julia Foote’s life was not a triumphal procession. She lost the sight of an eye as a girl. Her husband grew cold to her faith and died at sea while she was far from home. Her companion of many years died, and her mother and father. She lay for three weeks with a fever in Pittsburgh while her friends despaired of her life. In Cleveland an affliction of the throat silenced her for years. She was poor, often unwelcome, and frequently alone. And yet her memoir is full of praise. How did she hold the two together?

In the fire, not out of it

The key sentence comes just after her expulsion. Fiery trials, she wrote, are not strange things to the Lord’s anointed, and the rejoicing in them is born only of the Holy Spirit. Then she added: “He has promised us help and safety in the fires, and not escape from them.”

Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. DANIEL 3:25

That one sentence would save many Christians much confusion. Some expect faith to keep them out of trouble, and conclude when it comes that God has failed them. Julia Foote had read the promise she was given on the morning of her conversion — when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned — and she took it at its word. It promises company in the fire, not a way round it. She put the same thought in a lovely image: each wave of trial bears the Galilean Pilot on its crest.

When news of her husband’s death reached her, she says it almost caused her to sink beneath the blow. She answered it with the words of Job.

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. JOB 13:15

Why God permits it

In her chapter on her Cleveland years she stopped to consider why God allows His people to suffer. Her answer is careful and scriptural. Sometimes, she wrote, it is for the trial of their faith and the exercise of their patience; sometimes to draw them off from all human dependence and teach them to trust in Him alone; sometimes God lets the wicked go a great way, to prove His people’s steadfastness and show His power in upholding them. And then she applied it to herself with disarming honesty: “I had trusted too much in human wisdom.”

She also drew a distinction that many troubled believers need. Temptation, she wrote, is common to the holiest people; some temptations rise from our corrupt nature, some from the infirmity of our nature, some directly from the enemy, and these last her Lord Himself endured. “I think all temptation has a tendency to sin, but all temptation is not sin.” A believer who feels the pull of evil has not therefore sinned, and need not accept the devil’s suggestion that she has lost everything.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. JAMES 1:12

And over it all she wrote a sentence of astonishing gratitude: “I shall praise God through all eternity for sending me to Cleveland, even though I have been called to suffer.”

Prayer and the Spirit’s leading

Her memoir is, from beginning to end, a book of prayer. As a girl she prayed in a secret place behind the chimney in the garret. When her husband went to sea and left her among strangers, she opened her Bible and found the words that thy Maker is thine husband, and read the fifty-fourth chapter of Isaiah over and over. God gave her another text for that season too.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. PHILIPPIANS 4:6

She believed the Spirit led her day by day. She says she was directed by the Spirit to visit the Marine Hospital, where she found her long-lost brother dying. In her years of illness God taught her, she says, to sit patiently and wait to hear her Shepherd’s voice, resolved to follow no stranger.

And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. JOHN 10:5

Where to be careful

Two cautions belong here. The first concerns her throat. She wrote that she had sought a cure from earthly physicians instead of the Great Physician, that her joy was checked because of it, and that when she ceased trying to join the iron and the clay — the truth of God with the advice of men — and cried for the blood of Jesus to be applied to her throat, deliverance came. We may be glad with her that she was healed. But Scripture nowhere forbids a sick believer to seek a doctor, Luke himself was a physician, and her own words should not be used to lay guilt on the sick or to keep anyone from medicine. What can be learned is her prayer, not her suspicion of doctors.

The second concerns impressions. Her sense of being led was real and often fruitful, but it came with a humility we should keep: she tested it by Scripture and by its fruit, and she admitted that she sometimes erred in judgement. She also wrote, of her dark seasons, that she did not believe God ever withdraws Himself from a soul that does not first withdraw itself from Him. That is a searching word, and often a true one. But the sufferings of Job, and the cry of Christ on the cross which she herself quotes, warn us not to assume that every darkness is our fault.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? MATTHEW 27:46

She came through it all, as she put it, with the Bible as her chart and compass, and said that when she dropped anchor again it would be in heaven’s broad bay. That is what help in the fire looks like. Not a life without storms, but a pilot in every one of them.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name the fire you are walking through now. Ask God, not for a way round it, but for the company of the fourth man in it.

2. Ask which of her reasons for affliction may apply to you: the trial of faith, the exercise of patience, weaning from human dependence, or the showing of God’s power. Pray about the one that fits.

3. If you are troubled by temptation, write down her distinction — all temptation is not sin — and bring the temptation to Christ, who was tempted in all points.

4. Find a secret place of prayer, as she did behind the chimney, and keep an appointment there daily this week.

5. If you are ill, pray for healing and use the means God gives, without guilt for either.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You walked in the fire with Your servants and they were not burned. Walk with me in mine.

I do not ask to escape every trial. I ask for help and safety in it, and for grace to rejoice that I share Your sufferings.

Wean me from trusting too much in human wisdom. Teach me to wait for my Shepherd’s voice and to follow no stranger.

And when my voyage is over, bring me safe into heaven’s harbour, with the Bible still my chart. Amen.