Glory Seed Devotional’s, 2017: Anticipating and Experiencing Jehovah-Jireh...
Refining silver...
Shalom!
“The Lord’s promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over. Therefore, Lord, we know you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation, even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land.” (Psalm 12:6–8, NLT)
I Googled the process of refining silver and discovered there are multiple ways of getting the job done, none of them sound like a walk in the park if you happen to be a piece of silver. Of course we’re not silver we’re people but believe it or not there’s a refining process for us too, and if you’re like me it’s no walk in the park! I really don’t need to go into the details of my own refining process, because the bottom line is I am still in that process and so are you.
The question each of us face is not rather we’ll ever be refining free, but what and how are we going to handle/deal with it. The way I look at it of all the possible impact it can have on us the four at the top of the list are: 1) it will break us, 2) make us bitter, 3) make us stronger, 4) deepen/solidify our relationship with God. For me I am a 4 and a 3, with an occasional 2 thrown in when the 3D’s check in.
Psalms 12:6–8 talks about faith at its deepest level. The early stages of our faith journey can be described as the “take a chance” level. We read about faith in our bibles, listen to the testimonies of others then we take a slightly more than educated guess and trust in the promises of God. But our faith journey doesn’t stop there because there’s the ongoing refining of faith process and as the refining process does the work God designed to do faith goes to its deepest level, the “knowing level”. Verse 7, “Therefore, Lord, WE KNOW you will...” We know not because of what the bible says or what anyone else says but because the Holy Spirit, the first best teacher, confirms it to us through the second best teacher experience.
It has been said that life is a giant classroom, while that may be true but for me life is first and foremost a refinery where the finest silver is extracted from other “stuff”. “The silver used by the ancients was probably obtained by smelting lead sulfide ore, rich in silver (argentiferous galena). After the ore had been reduced to a metallic condition, the lead was separated from the silver by blowing hot air over the surface of the melted metal. The lead was thus changed to lead oxide which, in a powdered condition, was driven away by the air blast.” (copied from www.Biblehub.com/refining)
“Holy Spirit, let me see my refining process through the eyes of God.”
“Faith isn’t hoping for the best life has to offer, Faith is anchoring oneself to the Best God has to offer!”
Grace and PEACE,
Gary
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“Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.”
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