Walk Through The Fire
by Donavon L Riley
When you find yourself caught in the middle of trouble, resist the urge to sprint into the fog, chasing answers that aren’t there. Instead, stop. Look up. Fix your gaze on the crucified Christ. There’s a deeper wisdom written there, in the contours of His suffering—a wisdom older and more primal than any word in a book. It’s in the twisted limbs, the brutal weight He carried, and the silence of His endurance. This is your pattern. Not something to be admired from a distance, but to be lived. His body speaks more clearly than sermons ever could: when your own pain rises like a wave, don’t flee from it. Don’t scurry down from your own cross in shame or fear.
When self-pity taps you on the shoulder, beckoning you to crawl away, this is where the real battle begins. Instead of shrinking back, turn toward prayer. Not the soft, polished kind, but prayer like a man gripping the earth with his bare hands, refusing to let go. Let humility dig its roots deep into you. The goal isn’t just to endure—it’s to break your stubborn will open like a seed in the ground, to surrender, not to your desires, but to the hard and holy will of God. When you walk away from prayer holding that surrender, it’s a kind of feast. You’ll feel it in your bones. But when you can’t, when the old self still clings to you, you’ll walk away starving, still craving something real, something nourishing.
Make your soul a home with one guest—God. Don’t waste your strength on the noise, on the gossip that fills the air like smoke, on the venom that seeps from the world’s wounds. These distractions will always be there, waiting to pull you down. But don’t give them room. Let them pass by like shadows you don’t even notice. Be like a child, innocent in the midst of it all, stepping lightly through the darkness without being touched by it. The world will never stop spinning its webs of deceit and destruction, but you don’t have to get caught in them.
Instead, keep your eyes fixed on what is real. On Christ. On that terrible, beautiful cross where suffering becomes salvation. Let the storms of this world rage, let the noise rise to a deafening pitch, but stay still. Ground yourself in the Truth that doesn’t bend or break. In that stillness, in that surrender, you’ll find your soul rising above it all, steady and unshaken. You’ll learn what it means to walk through the fire and come out the other side, not burned, but purified.