I pick up a lot of cigarette butts. Not only those, but also beer cans, liquor bottles, food containers, and many other varieties of urban flotsam.
Recently on my walk around the church building, as I was picking up the things that have collected here, and praying for the day and for God to use everything that happens in our building for His glory, I thought about the refiner's fire.
As I was "skimming the dross" from our grounds, I thought about how God works in our lives to skim our dross. The process known in "Christianese" as "sanctification."
When Gold is refined, or reclaimed from an alloy, it is heated in a forge at very high temperatures. As it melts the impurities in it separate and the best sink to the bottom of the crucible. The impurities float to the top, this is the dross - the scum formed on the surface of molten metals - this gets skimmed off and the result is a more purified metal. This process is repeated in the refining process before true purity is achieved.
I'm paraphrasing a bit, but God spoke through the prophet Isaiah (1:25-26) saying "I'll totally strip away your dross and remove all your impurities . . . I'll restore you to the way it was at the beginning . . ."
Isn't that how God works in all our lives? Refining us, sanctifying us through trials by fire, and skimming off a bit of the bad stuff at a time - repeating the process until we're closer to pure.
So maybe you're feeling imperfect today, maybe you're still struggling with some impurity in your life that separates you from God. I would encourage you to have faith and continue to seek God's will in your life, He's not finished with you (or me!) yet.
Lord, thank You for seeing the value in me, for looking past my dross, for choosing to refine me. I continue to seek You, and I pray that You will use me as You will, for Your glory, as You continue the refining process. Amen.
Recently on my walk around the church building, as I was picking up the things that have collected here, and praying for the day and for God to use everything that happens in our building for His glory, I thought about the refiner's fire.
As I was "skimming the dross" from our grounds, I thought about how God works in our lives to skim our dross. The process known in "Christianese" as "sanctification."
When Gold is refined, or reclaimed from an alloy, it is heated in a forge at very high temperatures. As it melts the impurities in it separate and the best sink to the bottom of the crucible. The impurities float to the top, this is the dross - the scum formed on the surface of molten metals - this gets skimmed off and the result is a more purified metal. This process is repeated in the refining process before true purity is achieved.
I'm paraphrasing a bit, but God spoke through the prophet Isaiah (1:25-26) saying "I'll totally strip away your dross and remove all your impurities . . . I'll restore you to the way it was at the beginning . . ."
Isn't that how God works in all our lives? Refining us, sanctifying us through trials by fire, and skimming off a bit of the bad stuff at a time - repeating the process until we're closer to pure.
So maybe you're feeling imperfect today, maybe you're still struggling with some impurity in your life that separates you from God. I would encourage you to have faith and continue to seek God's will in your life, He's not finished with you (or me!) yet.
Lord, thank You for seeing the value in me, for looking past my dross, for choosing to refine me. I continue to seek You, and I pray that You will use me as You will, for Your glory, as You continue the refining process. Amen.
