As the expert refiner, God knows exactly what is required to purify your soul to make you shine with his grace. Praise the Lord as you go through the refiner’s fire – Jesus is with you in it.
At one time or another, we’ve all felt the flames of the refiner’s fire.
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and those flames can feel pretty hot at times, right? But Malachi 3:3 says that God – now get this – it says he “will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross.” Ouch! It’s the one experience we all share in common, right? No matter how much we balk at the idea, God has promised to refine his children. Now, to refine, says Webster, is “to make something free from impurities, dross, alloy… sediment… to free it from imperfection [or] coarseness [or] crudeness.” A refiner sits at his work – I love that picture in Malachi; God sits, he’s right there; he’s not wandering away; he’s not getting up and ambling elsewhere to get a drink; no, it says that God sits in front of his work, stoking the heat in order to improve that thing he places into the fire. I mean, just look at your gold wedding band, or maybe that gold chain around your neck. After all these years, it still gleams. It still wears well. Why? Because it had the luster and the richness pressed into it long ago when it went through the refining flames.
Or look at your best silver, your flatware that you got when you were married, those silver bowls and trays tucked away in your china cupboard. You pull them out maybe once in a blue moon, yet they still glow with that soft shine, even after many years. The refining process is supposed to turn out things all the more beautiful, all the more durable. Like, well, like us. God refines you and me to get rid of my coarseness and your crudeness; in other words, the impurity of our sin.
But let’s be honest: how many of us go through the refiner’s fire and come out the other end looking or smelling like charcoal or rusty iron or smoking ashes? We may be like the Pharisees of old who wore long faces and rumpled clothes when they fasted to attract sympathetic attention. Often when we come through a period of suffering, we want to make sure that everybody suffers along with us. And that thing of beauty that God wanted to create in the flames then becomes tarnished by our complaints and woebegone expressions. For instance, do we take a casual greeting like “How are you doing?” as an excuse to list every minor and major casualty of our day? Do we use our group prayer time as an excuse to gripe or gossip? Do we paint a picture of our marriage that colors our spouse as the culprit and us as the hero? If you do, I’m afraid people around you are going to smell charcoal. They’ll know you’ve been scorched by your troubles, and your testimony may well end up tarnished.
Friend, there’s a better way. God says in Zechariah 13, “I will deliver [them] to the refinery fires. I’ll refine them as silver is refined, test them for purity as gold is tested. Then they will pray to me by name and I will answer them personally.” Oh, friend, to me, that’s so comforting. Like I said, God sits as a refiner. He doesn’t walk away; he’s with you; he’s involved; he cares; and he will turn up the heat of your trial only so far, and no further. As the expert refiner, he knows exactly what’s required to purify you in order to make your character shine with the luster of his grace. To make you reflect Jesus. ’Cause you don’t want to smell like smoky charcoal. So, join me in offering wholehearted praise to our Savior as together we go through the refiner’s fire. He’s in it with us, friend; just as he was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And, who knows? Perhaps those who pause to peer into our furnace will see the Son of God.
© Joni and Friends