A Quiet Door Opens: When a Book Finds Its Way to Papua New Guinea

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
There are moments in life when something small happens on the surface, but inside your heart you immediately sense that something deeper is taking place.
This morning was one of those moments for me.
I recently received confirmation that my devotional Refined by Fire: Finding God in the Furnace of Trauma has been accepted and uploaded into the online library of Christian Leaders’ Training College (CLTC).
To say I am overwhelmed would be an understatement.
I sat quietly for a long time after reading the message, just reflecting on what it actually means. There are moments when the Lord does something so unexpected, so gentle and yet so powerful, that the only response left is gratitude.
What struck me most was not the achievement of having something published or shared. What struck me was the deeper implication that this devotional something that was born out of pain, suffering, and years of wrestling with God may now end up in the hands of people who are preparing for ministry in Papua New Guinea.
When I paused and really let that sink in, it moved me deeply.
Because the journey that produced Refined by Fire did not begin with an ambition to reach classrooms or libraries. It began in the quiet and often painful places of my own life. It began in moments where I was simply trying to understand how God works in the middle of trauma, suffering, and the broken parts of human experience.
The book itself is rooted in a simple but difficult question:
That question was not theoretical for me.
It came out of lived experience.
From a life marked by physical suffering, surgeries, trauma, and seasons where the weight of pain felt almost impossible to carry. From wrestling with addiction and facing the reality of my own brokenness. From encountering death when I contracted meningococcal disease as a young man and coming face to face with the fragility of life.
In those moments, faith is tested in a way that cannot be manufactured through sermons or books.
It becomes deeply personal.
You begin asking questions that cannot be answered with clichés.
Why does pain exist?
How does a person continue to trust Christ when life feels like a furnace?
Those questions shaped the writing of Refined by Fire. I did not write it from a place of detached theological analysis. I wrote it from the middle of the journey itself. The devotional became a space where Scripture, reflection, and personal testimony met in an honest attempt to understand how God works in the darkest seasons of life.
And now, somehow, that very book has found its way to a place I never expected.
Christian Leaders’ Training College in Papua New Guinea.
When I think about that reality, my mind begins to picture something far beyond myself. Students sitting in classrooms, preparing for ministry among their own communities. Future pastors and church leaders studying the Word of God and learning how to shepherd people through the joys and struggles of life.
Papua New Guinea is a nation where faith runs deep but where many communities also face enormous challenges. Poverty, hardship, isolation, and social struggles are realities that many believers there must navigate daily.
And yet in the middle of those challenges, the church continues to grow.
The gospel continues to spread.
The Spirit of God continues to move among ordinary people.
To think that a devotional written on the Gold Coast in Australia might now be read by students preparing to serve Christ in Papua New Guinea is something that fills me with humility.
Because the truth is, I know exactly where this book came from.
It came from the furnace.
The title Refined by Fire was not chosen as a poetic phrase. It describes the process through which my own life has unfolded. The Bible speaks often about the refining nature of fire. Gold is purified through intense heat. Impurities are burned away so that something stronger and more valuable can emerge.
The apostle Peter uses this exact image when he writes that our faith, tested by fire, becomes more precious than gold.
For many years I did not understand that process.
When suffering enters your life, it rarely feels like refinement.
It feels like chaos.
It feels like loss.
It feels like questions that have no answers.
But slowly, over time, I began to see that God was doing something deeper than I initially realised. The very places where I felt broken were the places where He began shaping my faith in ways that could not have happened any other way.
That journey eventually became the foundation of the devotional.
Each chapter reflects on different aspects of suffering, healing, and spiritual formation. Scripture passages are woven together with personal reflection, exploring how the presence of Christ can be found even in the darkest seasons.
The message of the book is not that suffering is easy or desirable.
It is that God is present in it.
That Christ meets people in the furnace.
That the Holy Spirit continues to work in ways we cannot always see immediately.
And now that message has somehow crossed an ocean.
That thought alone leaves me in awe.
I think about the early church and how the gospel spread through ordinary people carrying the message of Christ across cultures and continents. The apostles never could have imagined how far the message of Jesus would travel over the centuries.
Today we live in a world where a book written in one country can reach readers in another part of the world almost instantly.
Yet even with all our technology, the deeper reality remains the same.
It is still God who opens doors.
It is still God who places messages in the right hands.
It is still God who decides how and where a story will travel.
And in this case, He has chosen to send a devotional born out of trauma into the hands of people preparing to shepherd others.
That thought brings me back again to the faithfulness of God.
Because when I look at my own life story, I do not see a straight path toward ministry writing. I see suffering, detours, and seasons that made very little sense at the time.
Yet somehow the Lord takes those scattered pieces and begins weaving them into something meaningful.
That is what feels so significant about this moment.
Not because of recognition or accomplishment, but because it is another reminder that God wastes nothing.
The pain we carry.
The questions we wrestle with.
The stories we sometimes wish had been written differently.
In His hands, even those things can become tools that help others.
If even one student reading Refined by Fire finds encouragement in the middle of their own struggles, then the entire journey will have been worth it.
If even one leader preparing for ministry discovers that God meets people in the furnace of suffering, then the message has done its work.
And if the book simply reminds someone that Christ is present in the middle of trauma, then it has fulfilled the purpose for which it was written.
As I sit and reflect on this moment, I cannot help but feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude.
Gratitude for the journey.
Gratitude for the refining process.
Gratitude for the unexpected ways God continues to move.
And gratitude that the message of the gospel continues to travel far beyond anything we could plan or imagine.
The devotional was written from a deeply personal place.
But it was never meant to remain there.
Stories shaped by grace have a way of moving outward.
And today I am simply humbled to see one small example of that happening.
From a quiet place of reflection and writing, all the way to a training college preparing leaders in Papua New Guinea.
God truly works in ways that we cannot predict.
And sometimes the doors He opens remind us that the furnace was never the end of the story.
It was the beginning of something far greater.

About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.2M views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the "light in the mundane."

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