Good evening! (Or morning if you're reading this tomorrow!) I have another devotional from Ron Hutchcraft. I needed to read this one.
The Reason For the Heat
Our friend Barbara is incredibly creative - including creating
jewelry. The other day she told us about how she made a beautiful gold
ring. Actually the ring is designed in wax. When she has the ring
design that she wants carved in the wax, she pours plaster-of-Paris
around that molded wax ring. Then she puts it in an oven. Well, of
course, the intense heat melts the wax away until there's no wax left,
just a vacuum, shaped like the ring she wants. Then she puts this in a
centrifuge, and that spins gold into the vacuum where the wax used to
be. Gold rushes in where it was once just wax. And out comes something
very beautiful and much more valuable.
I have a feeling that someone listening right now is, well, like
you're in the oven. The heat around you is rising, and sometimes it
seems almost unbearable. There's stress and conflict, maybe grief or
pain or heavy pressure. And it's hard not to ask, "Why, God? Why are
You making me feel this heat that's so intense and why is it lasting so
long?"
It could be that part of the answer is in our word for today from
the Word of God in Malachi 3:2-3. "He will be like a refiner's fire or
a launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."
The fire you're feeling may very well be the Refiner's fire. It's not
designed to burn you or to hurt you. It's designed to melt away the
impurities and make you more valuable than you have ever been. And
notice, the Refiner only puts things that are valuable in the fire like
gold and silver. So the heat you're feeling may not be because
something is wrong, but because God thinks you are worth refining! He
put you in the fire because He believes in you, He loves you, He sees
what you could be if you could just lose some of the "wax."
When the heat is on, God has our attention as He does at no other
time. We really know Him when we really need Him, and we really need
Him when it's hot. God may be using the fire right now to get you to
examine some corners of your heart or of your life that you've never
really surrendered fully to His Lordship. He may use the oven to show
you junk you've accumulated that has to go before He can take you to
the next level. He wants to enlarge your view of Him and to prepare you
for greater things.
After a recent "A Word with You," I got this e-mail: "Our home
burned on December 25. I was very thankful God was with us during the
fire and we all made it out, but I was still very depressed over the
loss we suffered of our home." She goes on to tell about driving down
the road and hearing my message on purifying fire. She says, "That was
the beginning of our blessings from God concerning the fire. Although
we are a spiritual family, we had not truly connected with God in a
while. He has brought us a long way since December 25. Just as that day
symbolized the birth of Jesus, it will also serve as the rebirth of us
spiritually. Although we did lose everything we owned materially, we
gained something much more precious that night, something that will be
with us no matter what may come - a heart filled with love for our
Savior."
And that's why you're in the fire, to burn away all the wax, so God
can pour His gold where once there was only wax. He's making something
very, very beautiful.
Copyright © 2008 Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.