The Fires of Suffering: The Difficult Process of Refining The Heart

God desires for us to be like Jesus and He often uses the fires of our sufferings to make us so. Just as gold is purified through fire and land becomes more fertile through burning, so too God uses fires in our lives to conform us into the image of His Son so that we might bring forth much fruit for His glory. Godly suffering produces Godly fruit. Our refinement in righteousness is often the result of the heat being turned up high. We seldom learn in ease, Amen? Left to our own devices we usually become a mile wide and an inch deep. We are all too often hard on others and easy on ourselves. But if we are still living and breathing, God is still working on us. And, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, God disciplines us that we may share in His holiness. Further, we see in Hebrews 12:11 (NIV): “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.” Everyone desires righteousness and peace but the suffering, well not so much. Yet it is suffering which seeks to produce a Christlike character within which will not disappoint us and a character for which we were destined for. 

In the difficult, we are not to run around wringing our hands hopelessly screaming like Chicken Little, “the sky is falling,” rather we wait in hopeful expectation on whatever God is doing in “this” – even “this” – knowing it is for our ultimate good and for His glory though, more often than not, veiled to us at the time. We presently see such a poor reflection as in a bad mirror yet the promise of Scripture is we will one day see face to face. We presently know in part but we will one fine day know fully, even as we are fully known. This is the promise of Scripture. God desires for us to wait on the Lord and keep His way. He will exalt us to inherit the land as Scripture tells us.

When we are tested by God, we get to see firsthand some of what is dwelling in these hearts of ours. The heat brings to the surface what has actually already been there. Things God saw all along but He is now causing to bubble up for us to see clearly. Our hearts can be so deceitful.  
We so often need the sacred fires of the Lord to consume the dross of sin in our lives. A nano-second in His Presence, will find us to be like Job who stated in Job 42:4-6 (NIV): “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”