The Refiner's Fire

"For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw - each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." 1 Corinthians 3:9-15

Have you ever been through a season in your life where every lesson felt weighty, every hardship felt extra heavy, and it seemed like every time you turned around you were surrendering something or laying down a part of yourself you never imagined you would part with? Have you ever had moments with the Lord in His word where scripture felt like a sharp knife cutting through sin in your life that you didn't realize was there until you read those words? Have you come face to face with scripture that has confronted something that you knew God was asking you to lay down? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. I've felt many of these same things and, if I'm honest, at first I caught myself feeling like God was cruel for "burning away" so much at once in my life. It felt overwhelming and isolating. I felt like I was losing the very essence of who I was in some cases. However, the Lord has begun to show me that it is His consuming love that burns away the lesser lovers in our lives... for our good and out of His abundant care for us. Our God is a consuming fire and the closer you and I get to the flame the more of our flesh is burned away and the more of Him we are able to see and abide in. This is amazing news!

There are so many places in scripture that describe fire purifying silver and gold. Recently I began to study what exactly these scriptures were referring to when speaking of gold being refined by fire. Gold is purified by fire through a process called fire assay, also known as the "refiner's fire." During this process the gold is melted in a crucible to an extremely high temperature in order to separate it from impurities that exist within. Under the heat of the fire the gold's weight makes the pure parts of gold sink and the less dense impurities rise to the top. After the impurities rise, they are carefully skimmed from the surface of the molten gold. The gold is then poured out into a new mold. This process can be repeated over and over again to achieve higher levels of purity.

Have you ever felt like you were in the middle of this process in your walk with the Lord? I read this description about gold being purified to Adam recently and we both chuckled and said "sounds like the Christian walk." My friend, if you feel as though you are in the middle of the furnace you are not alone and you are not broken. You are taking part in growing in sanctification with the Lord. I'm not sure what the refining fire feels like in your life at the moment. You may have come face to face with a sin struggle that the Lord is inviting you to lay down and give to Him. You may be experiencing persecution for your faith. You may be reading scripture for yourself for the first time and coming to terms with some of the false precepts you've accepted about the Lord that He is revealing are not true of Him. You may be battling walking in the fear of the Lord versus succumbing to the fear of man. My friends, the Lord sees you where you are. He loves you. The spiritual heat you feel in this moment is because of His deep care over your eternal home and reward. He desires to dwell with you and lavish you with His presence and every sort of eternal gift we could never wrap our heads around this side of heaven. The furnace of our walk with Him during our time on earth creates deeper intimacy with the One who created us and stores up treasures in heaven for us in our eternal home.

I remember a particularly difficult season in my life recently where I felt as though I was suffocating from the flames. I was struggling financially, I had found myself in a season of deep loneliness relationally, and my mind seemed to be marked by constant anxiety. During this particular season I had allowed the busyness of life to distract me from the quiet intimacy I knew I needed with my Father. I remember sharing with a friend that I felt I was drowning. From my vantage point I felt as though the hits kept coming with shorter and shorter moments of relief in between. If I'm being fully transparent, I felt as though God had thrown me into the depths of the ocean and every time I managed to come up for air I would get a moment of relief only to be hit by another wave or sucked under by another current. I was overwhelmed, exhausted, and in truth I was angry. I didn't understand. I didn't see how God was in any of this mess. Why would God allow all of this difficulty in my life? He knew I loved Him didn't He? Where were my blessings and this life of bliss I had come to expect from Him? Ouch. Yep, I really did think that.

I am going to make a daring statement that may rub some people the wrong way. All I ask is that you pursue the Lord and the scriptures on this. I believe we have been sold a lie in modern christianity of a God that we have whittled down to a genie in a bottle and a passive, absent father that doesn't care much about our character and is only there to give us what we desire. In a consumeristic culture, we are fueled by instant gratification and have been trained to look for what we can get out of every transaction. If we aren't careful we can impose those standards of culture on our relationship with God. I believe this is what has led many christians to believe that God is here to make our lives better, easier, fuller, you fill in the blank. Friends, we have it backwards. We were created to glorify Him, not the other way around. Our lives should serve to honor, uplift, and magnify Him on earth. We were created to tell of His glory. We were created in God's image but make no mistake, we are not God.

Looking back on that season in my life I now realize I was playing God and in the process I was missing the beauty of refinement He was inviting me into. God wasn't trying to make my life horrible, He was inviting me into a deeper level of purity. He wasn't withholding His love, He was pouring it out and it was scorching the things in me that weren't from Him. If you're like me, we have a tendency to look at hard situations and automatically put them in the "bad" category of life. One of the most life giving revelations the Lord has given me is that the hard stuff is what forges deeper intimacy, reliance, and companionship with the God of the universe. Have you ever found yourself wishing your way out of a hard season? I have felt that way often throughout my life. Recently though I've experienced a bit of a paradigm shift - I've realized that the hard seasons can be the most profound seasons too. With great sorrow comes greater comfort from your Father as you allow Him to catch every tear. Seasons of shedding produce deeper intimacy with your Creator as you lay bare before Him. This is the beauty of submitting to the refiner's fire.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." Isaiah 43:2

Here is the beauty of our God. He will never leave you or forsake you. He is the fourth man in the fire. He is near to those who are His. Through His refining fire He isn't trying to kill us, he is burning off the things that keep us from experiencing true life in Him.

Here's another fun fact about gold refined by fire - of all the metals refined by fire, gold takes the longest. Gold is submitted to high levels of heat far longer than any other metal making it the purest of all metals. However, that's not the coolest part. The longer a metal is submitted to heat the softer it becomes. Gold is not only the purest metal, it is the softest, and as a result - the most malleable. The longer we are submitted to the refining fire of God the more malleable our hearts become. We are being transformed into His image. The heat isn't to break us - it is used to bring us to a place of surrender and malleability. Like clay in the hands of the Great Potter. Along the way the refining fire also produces a softness in us. It rids us of any inclination to spiritual pride or feeling as though we have it all together. When you are constantly submitted to the refiner's fire there's little room for looking down on another that you think is a few furnaces short of your refinement. A sweet gift of refinement is a greater level of humility. This fire creates in us a gentle in lowly spirit, modeled after Jesus, that looks at others through the lens of grace and encourages the other to step into the furnace to experience the intimacy of the One who meets us there.

"This phrase, 'Yet once more,' indicates the removal of things that are shaken - that is, things that have been made - in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." Hebrews 12:27-29

My friends, we are being invited into the furnace of the refiner's fire to burn away the things in our hearts and lives that can be shaken. I believe the Lord is and always will be inviting His people to a place of surrendering the shakable, sinful, carnal, and temporal things in our lives. Trust me, His promise is that the things that cannot be shaken will remain. We are invited to partake in a kingdom that cannot be shaken! This is incredible news. If you are struggling to lay down a sin pattern, in the midst of persecution, or feel as though you are drowning under the weight of what you are facing, He is near. My prayer for you is that you would boldly step into the furnace and allow the impurities to be burned away. This may seem harsh or even lonely but I assure you - when you step into the furnace of the Refiner's fire you will be met by a Man with fire in His eyes who died on a cross so that you could walk in the fullness of purity He ransomed for you. It may feel uncomfortable, scary, or even painful at times but trust me my friend, He is worth it.