Refinement

"He will not necessarily protect us- not from anything it takes us to make us like His Son- a lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by the fire will have to go into the process." - Elisabeth Elliot

Oh how I love Mrs. Elliot! Please read all of her books.. Seriously... Yes, all of them!

The purifying process is so interesting to me.  I will always and forever remember Chad Hood talking on a Wednesday night about the purification of metals process - how the metal is put through the boiling hot water and the impurities rise to the top.  The impurities are scraped from the top, and then your purest form of the metal is left.

With that said, the prayer of our hearts to God should be to remove those impurities in our life - to put us through the fire.  I feel like the Lord has been just teaching me so much lately.  I'm not really able to say what exactly.. I just know that I have had several of those moments lately where I just look up and say, "Lord what are you doing to me!"  These moments of honesty before God are wonderful.  We shouldn't hide from Him, but He wants to hear from us.  In those moments, I realize that He is refining me. He is burning off the impurities to make me more like His Son.  That is when I must be grateful and humbled that He is working in my life for HIS glory!

I will put this third through the fire;
I will refine them like silver and test them like gold.
They will call out to me,
and I will answer them.
I will say: They are my people,
and they will say: The Lord is our God.
Zechariah 13:9