Have you ever wondered why bad things happen to good people?  Well, take for instance Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  Here are three good guys who had a bad thing happen to them or did they?  Yes, they were thrown into the fiery furnace, but not one hair on their head was singed.  God was able to use that incident which otherwise would have been disastrous for good.  In that respect the bad thing that happened to them turned out to be a good thing.  God was faithful to them because of their faithfulness to Him  We often think that God must deliver us first and then we will be productive, and yet it is very effident that God can do great work trough times of adversity and suffering.  This is true of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  The men had been followers of God and were worshiping the one true God; unwilling to bow to the golden image.  They were faithful to Him, already productive for Him and so when they were thrown into the fiery furnace God delivered them.  Here we see that productivity came before deliverance.  When we go through rough times our faith is strengthened.  When there is a need for us to have our courage bolstered God allows us to grow through our trials and our faith is deepened.  That’s what happened to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  Even in bondage they were productive through faith that God would deliver them.  They didn’t say “God deliver us first and then we will have faith.”  Instead, they said “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in the 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.  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 3:16-19)  They were productive through faith in God regardless of being delivered or not.  “You see faith to the spiritual world is what sight is to the material world.” (Dale Oquist)  In John 20:29, God told Thomas “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”  PRODUCTIVITY BEFORE DELIVERANCE – we must first have faith and then we are delivered, but it has to be all God.  Remember when adversity, trials and suffering befalls us that our productivity is not contingent upon our deliverance.  God does not want us to say “God you do this and then I’ll do that.”  We must be productive first then we are delivered.   I want to give credit to Pastor Dale Oquist whom I heard give a sermon on this many years ago but it has stuck with me and I have thought about it many times since then, taking what I remember from the sermon and adding my own interpetation.  So much of what we do and who we become is a result of what we have heard and experienced in our Christian walk.  We hear and study what we have heard and then add our own interpretation.  Thank you to all the Pastor’s I have known who have influenced my walk with the Lord, and the person I have become.