“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”
I will be willing to bet most of us cannot tell what gold or silver looks like in raw form. It does not look like it does in the movies. Diamonds are another very expensive item that does not look like it does in the raw compared to jewelry stores. My geological schooling and job forces me to know what the raw rocks look like. I am also forced to see the chemical composition of those rocks because the tools we use in the oil and gas world work in response to the chemical make up of the rocks. All that to say that the finished product rarely looks the same as it does in the raw.
God’s people go through the same transformation believe it or not. We are not who we were when we started down the road of knowing Christ. We have been transformed and made new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” You have been transformed. Just like a bride on her special day starts out looking normal, wearing normal clothes and a normal hair do, we all start out the same way.
Our first job is to show up ready to get transformed. The bride is willing, ready and waiting with expectation to be dolled up, she cannot wait to go through the change because she knows something very beautiful is waiting on the other side. Our lives should be going through the same process. Sadly, we sometimes cannot bear to change our lives because we are comfortable where we are.
If the bride said on her wedding day, “You know, I think my jeans and a t- shirt with curlers in my hair is good enough today” then you would say she has done wigged out! Why then are we shocked when the Lord puts us in the furnace of affliction? His intentions are never to harm us but to “refine” us, kind of like the bride, the gold, the diamonds, the silver.
The bride has to endure a long process of being worked up with makeup, hair and so much more and guess what, all that will cost you. Yes, the process can and will cost us. God is trying to refine us into something even we cannot imagine but it will cost you. You will have to sell off your old way of thinking, get rid of some old friends, strip and repaint some old areas of your life in order to be transformed. It will cost you, but what you get in the end is something that the Bible says is better than gold or silver. It even blows away your own preconceived way of what you could be as well.
Just ask the writer of “Amazing Grace.” He was a slave ship captain before he found Christ. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a sinner like me!” Gets me every time. Today, wake up and realize you are being transformed and refined for the work of Christ. It will cost you and it may be a long process, but in the end you will be the one saying those famous words of Amazing Grace.
Prayer: Father, help us to understand the refiner’s fire in our lives. Help us to endure the momentary afflictions and changes that you use to refine our lives so we can emerge changed and ready to the work that Christ called us for. In Jesus name amen.
Let It Go 
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