August
28, 2018
I
had to use the title from the devotional for today – it just made sense after
the day I just had.
Life
has a way of bringing about challenges.
God uses these challenges to apply a cleansing heat to pride, bad
attitude and selfishness, just to name a few.
This holy heat is applied with purpose.
God wants to see Himself in us and just as a silversmith waits patiently
for the clear image of himself, these struggles refine us into God’s image. God uses the heat of life to purify us into a
pure picture of Himself.
It
all boils down to a choice – we can sit here and read this blog post and get
godly advice from godly women. We can
sit at church Sunday after Sunday and we can spend every morning in a Bible
study and still not want to be refined.
We can step out of the process and refuse to let go of the dross.
God
is calling us daily by giving us ways to grow, desiring to refine us in the
fires of His love, yet we walk away. We
whine about how tough life is and we look for that dross and we go backwards
and not forwards. But in order to reach
that perfect silver, we have to endure the heat of life. Once all the dross (sin) has been removed, then God will see Himself in me.
It’s
hard! And humbling to go through this
process. But I want to grow and be
refined. I want every situation in life
to guide me closer to the image of Christ.
Lord,
don’t let me refuse the refinement of your holy fire. I want to be more like you. Help me to be made into a silver that
reflects You. Please help these daily
struggles to not be in vain. Help me to
see them as opportunities for you to work in my life. I don’t want to walk away from the heat. I don’t want to take myself out of the growth
process. I don’t want to hang onto the
dross and impurities and the gunk.
I
choose to be refined. I choose to
grow. I choose obedience. I choose to be set apart as holy to the Lord (14:22).
