September 17

Sep 17 - Today from Proverbs 17 we look at verse 3
"The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart."

Most of you are probably familiar with the analogy here, so I will repeat it in brief.
The value of precious metals increases with purity. "Gold refined seven times" means that the gold went through the process of being melted by heat and brought to a precise temperature which causes impurities to rise to the surface seven different times. Each time the increasingly subtle impurities are skimmed off, leaving the gold more pure than when the process began. Often the analogy ends with the Q.&A. "When does the refiner know the metal is pure? When he can see his own reflection from the crucible."
It's a great analogy to teach - a very difficult one to live and learn. Many 'faith teachers' of today essentially teach that the crucible is controlled by the devil. If you have enough faith, you can rebuke the crucible and the fire, and it will flee . . . and the refining process is halted. I concur that the devil may place one in a crucible, and he may even stoke the flames, but it is God who controls the heat. That's the frustrating part for many of us. We struggle with the concept of how a loving God can allow us to be placed in such painful trials. Only God knows what is truly in our hearts, and only God knows exactly how much heat it will take to release any impurities that may reside there. It is true, we can often stop the refining process. God created us as free-will agents. If not, we would be incapable of love, trust or obedience. We can chose to yield our will to Him, or we can resist Him. We can choose to seek to draw near Him, or we can turn from Him. We can choose to be grateful or we can be bitter and resentful.
(fallen) Human nature tends to adopt a "fair-weather-friend" attitude. We tend to yield, draw near and live gratefully as long as things are going the way we would like. But even that's superficial. The test of a true relationship is when things aren't going the way we like, will we still be loving, trusting and obedient? Often our faith is to be a sheer act of the will, going totally contrary to our feelings and unrelated to our circumstances. You can often see this principle in the lives of the 'heroes of the Bible"; Job, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Esther, Ruth -- just to name a few. As you recall and study the lives of the O.T. saints, you will see them go through trial after trial, and each time they trust God, you will notice that some impurity was removed and they became more pure in their faith and stronger in their relationship with God. They were not perfect. They were being perfected.
Hebrews 5 verses 8 and 9 contain a truth about Jesus' incarnation that we seldom fail to grasp. There it says, "Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him." We somehow want to hold to the idea that even in the incarnation, Jesus continued to have the attributes of omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. But Philippians 2:7 clearly states that Jesus emptied Himself of His equality with God and took the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. That means he had to live by faith - just as we do. As a human, Jesus had to learn obedience. It's easy to obey when the instruction falls the way we want and like things. If Father told Jesus, "Just use your faith Son and cast the devil aside, and I will take the cup of the cross from you and place you directly on the throne," Jesus wouldn't have had to sweat blood in Gethsemane. Instead, He had to fully trust the Father. He had to choose to stay in the crucible. Because He did, he became the source of our salvation. The heat of His crucible was far more than any of us can even imagine - and because He stayed in it, we will never have to experience it. We will have crucibles in this life. God will call us to deny self that His will might be done. But on the other side of the crucible is spiritual maturity and blessing.
Remember this lesson the next time you sing the words of 'Refiner's Fire':

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire
Is to be Holy
Set apart by you Lord
Ready to do Your will

I have 'prayed' the words of this song many times. They sound so good. But how do I do when God answers this little prayer? Is my heart's desire to be Holy and ready to do His will - whatever? Or am I only ready to do His will if it coincides with my will and desires? Discipleship is surrender - total surrender to the will of the Teacher. Even Jesus had to learn that. The wonderful thing about our God -- when we surrender to his call and will, and commit to stay in the trial, He gives grace. We don't have to endure the trials in our own strength. Remember, God's hand is on the controls, and His Spirit lives in you. "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." -Jesus, John 16:33