Refining, refining, refining...

It's already the end of July.  The summer has gone quickly, but I am very ready to head off to Kenya, and I am excited to say that God has provided all of my needed support money!  Thank you to all who had a part in this, and please continue to keep my trip in prayer.  

The summer has been a challenge in many ways, but not necessarily in the ways I would have expected.  Interning at my home church has been a great experience with little setbacks or difficulties; God has really blessed my time there.  However, God has been using much of the summer to stretch and challenge me spiritually.  

Refining, refining, refining...an older friend told me at the beginning of the summer that the purest Gold is refined around 21 times.  That's just a metal my friends; we are human beings; living souls with thoughts, emotions, feelings, scars—and

 and the list continues.  I want to ask us all something; how do we view refinement in our lives?  Sure, we know it is a good thing and that it makes us stronger, better, more mature, etc, but when push comes to shove let's be honest—refinement is not fun.  It hurts, and I know that I am generally a lot more angry or confused with God during times of growth and refining than I am grateful or excited.

A continuing prayer of mine this summer has been to not only understand and believe in God’s peace and freedom intellectually but to KNOW God’s peace and freedom in my life.  I have prayed for peace and freedom, but most of the time I've felt less at peace and by no means free from different struggles in my life.  This has caused me a lot of frustration, but I have begun to see more clearly throughout the past few months that God is not interested in giving us peace and freedom as if they are little packets of experience or emotion; God is interested in giving us Himself. 

Pray for peace…God will show you that He is your peace.  Pray for freedom…God will show you that freedom comes from knowing Him.  When I pray for peace and freedom my focus is often on the things I am getting from God rather than on knowing God Himself.  I’m not saying that God doesn't ever want to make things easier or ease or struggles, but do we want these things more than God?  Is He our peace, our freedom?  This isn't something we naturally say “yes” to, and this isn't something we teach ourselves.  This is why we need refinement.

God is a jealous God.  He made us, loves us passionately, pursues us endlessly and has the patience and humility to do this in a way that doesn't force us to come to him.  He lets us get angry at Him; He lets us falsely accuse Him of abandoning us, all the while loving us far too much to take our struggles, our pain, or refining fires away, because if we’re serious about knowing His peace and freedom then He will not settle for anything less than answering these prayers completely—peace and freedom are complete only in Him, apart from our circumstances. 

So…what do we do in the meantime?  What do we do when we recognize that true peace and freedom come only through knowing Jesus Christ; when we really want this but still haven’t seemed to realized it; when God just doesn't seem to be enough; when we seem worse off, crushed, weighed down because of everything else that we want for our own lives—and all the while the rest of the world seems to be doing just fine without this crushing burden to seek out a God who promises to be the “giver of all good things”?  I’m not entirely sure, because this is where I am many days.  However, I do know that holding tightly to God’s promises and commands—even when everything else seems to contradict them—while often more difficult and tiring, has always been worth the fight.  It will always be worth it, and so what we can do is continue to come humbly before the God of the Universe every morning to ask for the strength and faith to keep believing the truth that He is for us and more than capable of giving us what is best for us.  We can find joy in the midst of our journeys by coming together openly and honestly and choosing to praise God together, affirming His plan in each of our lives.  Hebrews 12:1 says that “since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  We are not in the fire alone, nor are we told to endure it alone.  We are to endure—to run—together.  It’s not just about me running the race; it’s about us running the race.

My prayer is that all of you reading this—including myself—will have the courage and faith to keep running; to take God for His word and to really KNOW the peace and freedom that come from seeking and loving the God of the universe, above everyone and everything else.  Maybe then we’ll even begin to head into the refining fires of our lives with gratitude and anticipation.