How Does God Refine Us?
Recently, I had the opportunity to teach my first sermon. The time and preparation it took really gave me a bigger appreciation for what pastors do on a consistent basis. Learning how they prepare and learning how to discover my own voice in teaching was a special and interesting journey for sure. For this week, I would love to share in depth on what I talked about which involved God as the Refiner. While my message initially was only 15 minutes, I would love to expound more on this idea today. This topic is something that is a little more personal for me and the season that I have been walking through and comes deeply from my heart, meaning this will probably be a deeper post. That being said, are you ready? Let's get into it!
As we start out today, I want to begin by sharing a story. This specific story dates all the way back to my elementary school days of playing club soccer. See on this specific day, I remember we had a morning game, and the grass was covered in dew from rain the night before. To help paint the picture, it was the second half of the match, and it was a tie ball game. As we were playing, one of my teammates gave me one of the most beautiful passes in elementary school soccer history, giving me the opportunity to score. You can imagine for me that the pressure rises as I have a shot to score a goal for my team. You can hear the rocky music in the background as anticipation builds up for me.
As I go to kick the ball, it didn't quite go how I planned it. If any of you have seen the clip where Charlie brown completely misses the ball, it looked exactly like that. I go to kick the ball and my feet slip from out under me, causing me to miss the ball entirely. If that wasn't bad enough, the outcome of me slipping caused me to hit my funny bone, leading to me cracking my bone all the way up my arm. That's right...I broke my arm hitting my funny bone. This meant that I was out for the rest of the season, and I had lost the ability to play the sport I loved.
Now while that might be a funny story about loss in elementary school, some of you have experienced real loss in your life. Some of these losses could look like a similar story for you where if you told it, people wouldn't understand why it was such a big deal or why it caused you so much pain. Just because someone doesn't understand, doesn't mean that this loss wasn't a big moment in your life or that what you went through doesn't hold value. But what if I told you that God actually intends those losses for good? What if the hard things that are removed are meant to refine and shape us? That's what I want to take about today - how God acts as a refiner in our lives, purifying us through the heal of trials. And there are three points that I want to focus on today that I may have touched on a little in the previous posts.
The first point is that God is our Refiner's Fire. See when we think of a normal fire, some of us might think of something that is comforting, contained, or warm like a fireplace. Others of us might see fire as something that is destructive, uncontained, and something that destroys everything in its path. The difference between a normal fire and this Refiner's fire is that a Refiner's fire burns away impurities to leave behind pure gold. The Refiner's job in this to watch carefully and allow the heat and flames to do their work without completely melting the metal. In the same way, just like it says in Psalm 66:10, God applies this heat to purify our hearts, test us, and refine our soul.
When something is removed from our life, it may feel like pointless destruction in the moment. But I believe that if you look closer, you can often see how God used it to reveal sin or selfishness that was holding you back from Him. The pain helps reveal impurities in our character that need to be burnt away in order for you to become more like Christ. In 1 Peter 1:6-7, Peter says this "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed”.
Similarly, I think we can view God as our blacksmith. A blacksmith, when they are smelting metals, they have to get the flames to extremely high temperatures so that the metals can be melted. The reason they do this is because they are looking to burn off the imperfections and flaws, so that eventually it can be made pure. The way that the blacksmith knows he is finished is when he can see his own reflection in the metal. In the same way, just like a blacksmith heats metal to extremely high temperatures to make it melt enough to be shaped, God is burning out the imperfections in our lives to help shape our character. He burns away these flaws and imperfections that are keeping us from living the way He designed for us. This process can often be painful and hard for us to understand in the moment. But the result of this is growth in godliness, integrity, and strength.
Lastly, I want to talk about God as our carpenter. See as a carpenter is working on a given sculpture, depending on the size, some sculptures might take only up to 30 minutes for them to be done, while a larger scale project might take them up to even a few years to complete. some of these carvings are bigger than others, meaning there is more for the carpenter to chip away for the result to be exactly what he intends it to be. The carpenter is constantly looking for and finding ways to make his sculpture better to ultimately reach its full potential. In the same way, I think God is doing this for us.
As we go throughout life, there are going to be things that God is constantly chipping away at over the course of our lifetime. The thing that we can hold onto while we go through these trials is that God is chipping away at the things that restrict us from living the life, He has intended for us. In order for us to get there, He needs to do a work in and through us to ensure we are ready for the next season he calls us to.
See God the master craftsman is constantly at work in our lives, slowly and skillfully chiseling away at our sinful natures. This lifelong process removes anything that would hinder us from becoming who He created us to be. And I think that the story that best illustrates how God walks with us through refining trials in the story of Job. Job was a righteous man who had everything he could ever want - wealth, a large family, servants, a nice house, and so many other blessings. Yet, God allowed Satan to take nearly everything away from him - his possessions, his children, and even his health. The crazy thing is, at first Job responds with faith saying in Job 1:21 that "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord". But as Job's suffering continues to drag on, he begins to question God. He ends up even lamenting the day of his birth and argues his case before God.
The reason Job questions God is because he doesn't understand why these things are happening, even when he is faithful. Yet, through it all, Job never loses his faith in God. Although Job complained or was mad at God, he expressed it through prayer, rather than complaining to his friends or his wife. Job was faithful because he never lost that relationship. And in the end, God reveals that this suffering and loss had a purpose - to refine Job's reliance on his own righteousness versus trusting in the righteousness of God.
Like Job, we might not understand the reason for our pain in the moment. We may cry out to God asking Him why? Why are these things happening to me? But, as Job learned, God often has purposes we cannot see. His refining fire burns away the impurities of pride and self-sufficiency. God uses trials and losses to refine us, not define us. Job's story teaches us that God walks with us through even the deepest of pain. When we feel abandoned, He is quietly at work using our suffering to purify our faith and bring us closer to Him.
Hebrew 12:11 reminds us of this "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. "It's hard to see in the moment when God is removing something from your life. It can feel confusing, painful and unfair. But we have the promise that God is able to use all of it for good - to refine, strengthen and purify our faith.
I think back to the story that I told at the beginning involving me breaking a bone. If you've ever broken a bone before, you know that it is something that takes a while to heal, and that process is uncomfortable, painful, and incredibly inconvenient. The thing about a broken bone is that once it is fully healed, it comes back stronger than it ever was before.
Maybe you're reading this and you're in a fiery trial right now. Maybe God has also removed a relationship from your life. Maybe you recently lost a job, or maybe you even had a dream that ultimately fell short. For others of you, maybe God has already brought you through a trial and through a Refiner's fire. As you look back, maybe you can see how those trials led to growth. Where you had pride, maybe now you have humility. Where you had selfishness, maybe now you have compassion for others. Whatever season you might find yourself in - take hope that God is still at work. Know that although things might feel broken in the moment, as God behind to heal and restore things in you, He is making you stronger than ever before.
So, what do we do? See, I believe it boils down to us shifting our perspective from something that we have lost, to something that is going to come. What becomes broken, God brings back stronger. What God takes away; He replaces with something so much better. So, as we experience loss and things that cause us to question why, we must shift our mindset to what God refines, He restores. So, will you trust Him? Will you believe that what God removes, He can replace with something far better if we keep our eyes fixed on Him? Lastly, what is something that you are focusing on more than your walk with God? Redirecting our focus on Him and trusting that He will always make a way is vital for us to grow in that relationship with Him. As we submit to the Refiner's fire, the more we begin to reflect Him in everything we do.
