Read the preposition carefully, because everything is in it. When you pass through the waters. Not if. Not around.
We would prefer around. Most of our prayers, honestly, are requests for a detour. Take this away, move me past it, let it turn out to have been nothing.
The verse does not offer that. It assumes the water and the fire, and it puts God inside them with you. That is a harder promise and a more useful one, because it holds in situations where a detour never arrives.
There is something else worth noticing. The promise is not that you will not feel it. Water is still cold and fire is still hot. The claim is that they will not have the last word on you.
If you are in it right now, you have not been forgotten or skipped over. You are exactly where this verse was written for, which is the middle rather than the far side.
