First Baptist Church of Manassas
Moving the Kingdom Forward Through Faith
The Pastor’s Pen: Bottom Line Living
Sunday, October 4, 2026 | Women’s Day
A Word From Your Pastor
Church, what a Women’s Day.
From the first tambourine to the last amen, this house belonged to God and the women of this church led us straight to Him. I had the privilege of sitting and receiving this morning rather than preaching, because our preacher for the hour was Rev. Dr. Charlotte McSwine, and she brought us a word I am still sitting with.
So this letter is a little different. I am not recapping my own sermon. I am handing you hers, the best I can, because it was too good to leave in the sanctuary. If you were with us in the room or on the livestream, you already know. If you missed it, I want you to have it anyway.
Sunday Recap
Dr. McSwine took us to Daniel chapter 3, verses 16 through 28, in the New Revised Standard Version. She warned us it was a long piece of scripture, and then she told us why she needed all of it: you cannot understand what those three young men did unless you see the whole scene they were standing in.
She began somewhere I did not expect. She opened with Pauli Murray’s Song in a Weary Throat, where Murray writes that if you asked a Black woman in America what her greatest achievement has been, her honest answer would be: I survived. And Dr. McSwine said what every one of us in that room already knew in our bones. We have come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord. There is no other way to frame it, state it or claim it. We have survived by not ignoring bottom line living, and bottom line living is based on surrender to God, no matter what.
That is where she met Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, standing in front of a king, refusing to present a defense. They swapped their own desired outcome for whatever God wanted. They rejected what she called the Burger King mentality, where we have been taught that we can have it our way. They would not bow, they would not go against their home training just because it looked expedient, and they would not go along to get along. They were not afraid of dying. They were more afraid of disowning God.
She spoke very directly to the sisters at that point, and I want to repeat it here because some of you needed it. Too many of us get tied up in situations because they looked promising on the front end. The stuff can be alluring, especially when we did not come from a surplus of the finer things, and we get so excited that we overlook the signs and the markers of somebody who only wants to dominate, control and use us. Do not let anybody talk you out of your relationship with God. Do not let anybody corrupt you with the possibility of a comma.
Then she gave us her first point: bottom line living is not predicated on things going our way. Look at verses seventeen and eighteen. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us, let Him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods. Dr. McSwine said their belief in God was never predicated on how God responded to their situation, and our faith ought to hold whether God delivers us or not. God is more than a cosmic bellhop. God is more than a deliverer of blessings. God is sovereign because God is God, and just as God is God when the sun is shining in our lives, God ought to be God when it is raining.
In her great grandmother’s words, it takes more than jaw jacking and lip service to hold that position. And she showed us where theirs came from. The New Jerusalem Bible renders verses twenty four and twenty five with the three of them walking in the heart of the flames praising God and blessing the Lord. They could do that because they already had history with God. They had nurtured a relationship and fellowshiped with Him enough in the good times to keep them steadfast when everything broke loose around them.
All the praise, all the lifted hands, all of it made it matter in the crunch. They did not praise God to keep from looking like the odd person out. They praised God because God was supreme in their lives.
She told us about Mother Lord, whom she visited as a twenty three year old Christian long before she ever preached. Mother Lord had withered down to skin and bones, and without fervor or fanfare she lay there praising God. Dr. McSwine said that visit stopped being a visit and became an education: your belief in God can hold you when things do not go your way. Mother Lord was witnessing, teaching and training right up until she breathed her last breath, and in Shirley Caesar’s words, she was not playing church.
The second point was this: our actions ought not be predictable. The enemy should not be able to prompt us to act prematurely. Verses twenty four through twenty seven: the king rose up astonished and said, was it not three men we threw in? And they said, true, O king. He replied, but I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the fourth has the appearance of a god. The ropes were burned, their bodies were not. Not a hair singed, not a tunic scorched, not even the smell of fire on them. Dr. McSwine called it the precision of God, and she is right.
Here is what she did with it. The predictable thing, once the ropes fall off, is to run out of the fire. They did not. They waited to be called out by name. Coming out too soon might have infuriated the king further, and God was doing something on the inside of that fire that was bigger than their comfort. God takes the trying moments of our lives and uses them to disciple people who have not believed yet. God takes the downs of our lives and establishes dominion with them. Watch what happened to the king: he started out having people believe he was a god, then he admitted the fourth figure looked like a god, and he ended up declaring, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the Most High. We do not get to react too fast, because somebody’s conversion is hanging in the balance.
She closed where our story and that story meet. When the furnace was turned up seven times hotter, instead of crying and moaning and protesting and fussing, they praised. And Black people know something about that. What they did to our bodies did not keep us from standing ten toes down. Grandmama went into the valley and stayed there too long, and her children and her children’s children believe in God today. We are not a surrendering people. We kept on pushing when the battle looked unwinnable, and that is how we got to civil rights. Sometimes God lets you stay in the flames so somebody else can hear how you got over. And this world will give you every reason to think you have to earn your value and your honor. You do not. God already gave it to you.
Life Applicable Gems
Here is what I want you to carry out of her message and into this week.
1. Bottom line living is surrender to God, no matter what.That is the whole of it. Not surrender when the outcome looks good, not surrender once the fire has been turned down. Three young men stood in front of a king with a furnace already heated and handed God the outcome before they knew what the outcome would be. That is the bottom line, and everything else in the Christian life is built on top of it.
2. Your faith is not supposed to depend on how God answers.Hear verse eighteen again: “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods.” But if not. They had already settled what they would do if God did not come through the way they hoped. Dr. McSwine put it plainly: God is more than a cosmic bellhop and more than a deliverer of blessings. God is God when the sun is shining, so God has to be God when it is raining.
3. Reject the Burger King mentality.We have been trained by this world to believe we can have it our way. Bottom line living swaps our desired outcome for whatever God wants, and it does it without blinking. You will not find a single verse in Daniel 3 where those three men negotiate.
4. Do not go along to get along when it costs you who God made you to be.They would not bow because bowing would have diminished their witness and made them look like they never believed in God in the first place. Sister, brother, the thing in front of you may look promising on the front end. Look again at the signs before you trade your integrity for it.
5. Praise in the good times is what holds you in the fire.The New Jerusalem Bible says they walked in the heart of the flames praising God. They could do that because they already had history with God. They had fellowshiped with Him enough in the good days that when everything broke loose, the praise was already in them. Your Sunday praise is not a performance. It is training.
6. Do not rush out of the fire before God calls you out.This is the part I keep thinking about. The ropes burned off, they were free to move, and they still waited to be called out by name. Coming out too soon can undo what God is doing on the inside of the fire. Our actions are not supposed to be predictable to the enemy.
7. Sometimes God keeps you in the flames so somebody else can hear how you got over.Nebuchadnezzar went from demanding worship to declaring, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.” Somebody’s conversion was hanging in the balance of how those three men carried themselves in the fire. Somebody’s conversion may be hanging in the balance of how you carry yours.
Sit With These This Week
Read all of Daniel 3 for yourself, and read verses seventeen and eighteen out loud. Then read 2 Corinthians 12:9, the verse Sister Michelle gave us this morning: My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Then ask yourself the one question this morning put in front of all of us: have I already decided what I will do if God does not answer the way I am asking? That answer is your bottom line.
If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods.Daniel 3:17-18, NRSV
From My Desk To Yours
One more word before I let you go. Dr. McSwine said something near the end that I do not want you to miss: this world is working overtime to convince you that you have to earn your value. You do not. It was given to you by God before anybody in this world had an opinion about you.
And if you are in a fire this week, do not panic and do not run out ahead of God. Praise Him in it. Somebody is watching how you carry it, and God has not forgotten where you are.
If you are carrying something you have not told anybody about, come and see me. That is what I am here for.
Your Servant and Pastor,
Rev. Dr. Keith Savage
Senior Servant, First Baptist Church of Manassas
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