yet He is still good

Everyone loves a good tattoo backstory, so I thought I’d share mine!

If you know me at all, you can probably guess that this bad boy was inspired by a passage in the Bible. So let’s just get right to some “fiery” teaching on the prophetic book of Daniel, shall we!

First off: why Daniel?

About three years ago, I was preparing to speak at a women’s retreat on the topic of thanksgiving (the posture of the heart, not the overly-commercialized holiday).
I was assigned a specific psalm as a starting point and was free to go where I wanted from there. The psalm itself was originally written as a song and is quite repetitive. It starts with the declaration that God. Is. Good.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.
His love endures forever.
– Psalm 136:1

When I read that verse, the first thing that came to mind was a story found in Daniel 3 about three Hebrew officials in the Babylonian empire, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Basically these three guys were stuck between a rock and a hard place – or an idol and a hot place – as I like to call it (see what I did there?).
To this day, I don’t know why the Lord brought that passage to my mind, but I just love it. Here’s some context followed by an excerpt:

The king of Babylon had a pretty big name, and an even BIGGER ego. King Nebuchadnezzar had a golden statue constructed in his honour and it was a whopping 90 ft tall and 9 ft wide. That’s about the equivalent of a nine story building. Scholars argue that it was probably made of wood, and simply encased in gold because there was no way that the Babylonian empire would have had access to that much gold, but I digress.

So the statue was erected on a plain for all to see. The king had arranged for music to be played, and commanded that everyone bow down and worship the statue when the music began. If anyone failed to do so, they would be thrown into an also-very-big fiery furnace.

To everyone’s shock and horror, there were three men left standing amongst a sea of prostrate worshipers which, let’s just say, left the king more than a little irate.
Now the Bible doesn’t say why, but for some reason, the king actually gave these men an opportunity to explain themselves. Perhaps because they were trusted officials of the king, we don’t know. But for me, their response is the absolute climax of the story. So buckle up, kids!

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you.
If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty.
But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.”
– Daniel 3:16-18

Well hot damn (pun intended), talk about a clap back.

I feel like I could use a full blog post just to unpack that response! Which… in fact, is precisely what this has turned out to be. Let’s carry on.

In the end, their confident response was not enough to spare them from the flames. The Bible says that the king was literally FURIOUS WITH RAGE.
Y’all, I wish I could say that I can’t relate to that level of heightened emotion over being disobeyed, but sadly I have totally been there. Again, I digress.

So the king, as we’ve established, was furious with rage, and had the fires stoked to seven times hotter than usual. He had the three men bound and thrown into the furnace to face their doom. Then the king noticed something…

“Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”
– King Neb from Daniel 3:25

King Nebuchadnezzar literally saw Jesus Christ in a pre-incarnate appearance. What?! MADNESS!

The king immediately called them forth and they walked out of the furnace unharmed. The men were not singed, scorched, burnt, or had even the faintest smell of smoke on their bodies. The king then gave all credit to the God they worshipped, and commanded that everyone give glory to God, claiming that no other god could save in this way (vs. 29).

What strikes me from this story more than the miraculous way that the Lord saved them, is the faith that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego displayed in the face of adversity.
And not just that they believed God would save them, but that they fully knew that God is worthy to be obeyed and worshipped, even if He does not.

I just had to dig into some commentaries to get more out of this passage, especially where the three Hebrew men respond to the king. Here’s some gold I found whilst digging, mostly by Warren W. Wiersbe:

The devil tempts us to destroy our faith, but God tests us to develop our faith, because a faith that can’t be tested can’t be trusted. We know that false faith withers in times of trial, but true faith takes deeper root, grows, and brings glory to God. This explains why God permitted the three Hebrew men to be tested and then thrown into a fiery furnace.

The experience of these three men forced me to examine my own faith and determine whether I possess the kind of authentic faith that can be tested and bring glory to God.

Pregnant with E, and the reminder of God’s goodness etched on my arm

See, while I was studying this passage all those years ago and preparing for my talk at that women’s retreat, I found out that I was pregnant! Oh happy day! It was such an answer to prayer, as I had been waiting for a positive test for nearly two years already.
Unfortunately, I started spotting and cramping and I was scared, confused, and angry. The timing could not have been worse. What could have been just another disappointing regular monthly cycle, was suddenly the elating high of a new baby coming, followed by the terrifying potential of a heartbreaking loss.
And all this while I was preparing for my first big speaking engagement. Well the spotting continued, and after an inconclusive ultrasound, I determined the following:

God. Is. Good… All. The. Time.

If He saves this baby, and I carry to term, and I birth this child, and all is well… God is good.

But if I keep cramping and spotting, and have to go speak at this retreat with the unknown looming over me, still cramping and still spotting… and if I come home still cramping and spotting, and I go to the hospital again, and have another ultrasound, and they cannot detect the baby’s heartbeat, and tell me I’m losing the baby, but the cramping and bleeding won’t stop, so I have to take medication to pass the remains of the child, and I have contractions and more bleeding, and I sink into the deepest sadness I’ve known and much confusion over what the heck just happened to me… well… God is good.

Before you wonder if I bothered to proofread, please know that that absolutely dreadful run-on sentence was completely intentional. My world was spinning endlessly for those weeks of waiting, and everything I described is exactly how it all played out.

But after that first inconclusive ultrasound, when it really could have gone either way… just like the three Hebrew men who could very well have died in that furnace… I determined that God is good, and that He is worthy of worship, whether or not I am spared from the flames.

The day my rainbow baby discovered my tattoo

Because you see, faith in God means OBEYING God regardless of the feelings within us, the circumstances around us, or the consequences before us.

Just like we saw with the three Hebrew officials, true faith isn’t frightened by threats, impressed by crowds, or swayed by superstitious ceremonies. True faith follows and obeys the Lord and trusts Him to work out the consequences.
Even if those consequences result in miscarriage… So do I still worship if I miscarry? Is He still good even if I never get to hold my baby on this side of heaven?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were men of faith, but not of presumption. If they had declared with certainty that God would deliver them, that would have been presumptuous, because they didn’t actually know what God had willed for their situation. Instead, they stated that their God was able to deliver them, but even if He didn’t, they still wouldn’t fall down before the king’s golden image because their God was unchanged. His goodness, still true. This resonated with me so much and became the inspiration for my tattoo.

I told myself, “I want these words etched on my arm forever” and I chose a spot on the inside of my left arm to do it. I’m left-handed, so I wanted the words to stare me in the face as a constant reminder, whether I was eating or drinking or typing or writing or driving, that God is good. No matter what.

I remember resolving quite definitively that, “I will get this tattoo. And it’s not a matter of if, but when. I’ll either have the ink done after my baby is born, or after I miscarry. Because the goodness of God is not dependent on the outcome of this pregnancy.”

I’ve found that there’s such a thing as commercial faith that says, “I’ll follow and obey God if He rewards me for doing it”. But this is the devil’s philosophy of worship. Just like he told Jesus when tempting Him in the desert: all these things will I give you if you will fall down and worship me (Matthew 4:9). But this isn’t believing God – it’s bargaining with God! True faith confesses the Lord and obeys regardless of the consequences.

God always rewards faith, but He doesn’t always step in and perform special miracles.
– Warren W. Wiersbe

I was so grateful to God for giving me this passage at such a critical time in my journey. It was a really difficult season for me, but also a season of growth, and that’s why I decided to start the phrasing of the tattoo with ‘yet’. See the word ‘yet’ may be small, but it’s a heavy, weighted word. It implies that a whole load of crap happened before it.