The Refiner’s Fire
By Shauna Leis
“But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.”
Malachi 3:2-3
A refiner’s fire…Just picture it with me now. A blazing hot furnace stands ready to burn off any material that is not of the purest gold. Gold mixtures with various impurities are placed in a ceramic container and are then exposed to the intense temperature of a furnace that has been heated upwards of 2000 oF. The high temperatures are necessary to get all of the materials into a liquid form so that the impurities would float to the top of the mixture. Once the impurities have floated to the top, they can be either skimmed off with a bar, or a flux material can be added that will bond with the impure materials. Since this slag is much lighter than the molten gold, the material will be freed to be skimmed off from the top. Once the refining is complete, an analysis is prepared of the final material to ensure its purity before it can be used by an end customer for their particular purpose (like jewelry making).
Webster’s dictionary describes refining as “to free from impurities or unwanted materials, to free from moral imperfection, to improve or perfect by pruning and polishing.” The Hebrew root word is “tsaraph”, which means “to test to prove true.” I believe that there is a very strong correlation between a refiner’s fire for gold and God’s refiner’s fire for each of our lives.
Think about how refining could be used throughout your life if you are willing to open up all of those creaks and crevices to His probing Spirit. You know those things I am talking about, things you never even share with your best friend – the ones that you believe no one else can see. But God sees them as impurities that need to be removed. As we begin to open ourselves up to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we allow ourselves to be melted by the blazing furnace of God’s Truth, or His Word. Those hardened parts of us that could not be “melted” by any other method slowly begin to soften and mix in with everything else in the midst of God’s fierce blaze. We may or may not recognize these concerns as items that even need to be removed, but God’s analysis of our lives reveals these pieces that are just not a part of His will for us.
So the bad news is that it may take a couple of refining processes to remove all of those impurities – or in my case many, many refining processes as I have lots of impurities that need to be removed. The good news for us all – God never stops the refining process. He completes the first round of refining, melts down all of the materials so that the impurities can rise to the top and be skimmed off. He then cools us down and allows us a period of healing and takes an analysis of our hearts again. After the analysis there are typically more pieces that need to be removed so God completes the cycle yet again.
And sometimes He even uses a little “flux” material to help the impurities come out. Flux can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and most likely resembles someone that just rubs us raw. Those people bring out all of our impurities so that God can properly deal with them and remove them from our lives. Precious One, will you let God refine you today? Zechariah 13:9 says, “This third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.’” God says that after He has refined us, we will call on His name, and He will call us His people. Do you just love the ring of that now? I cannot wait for the day that God says, “They are my people,” and I am included in that group! I pray that today you will open up all of your life to God today and allow His refining fire to have its way.
Pray with me: Oh LORD God, You are the Great Refiner, and Your fire blazes with intensity to start its work in our lives. Show us Your analysis about our character and the areas that You consider impurities that must be removed to further Your Kingdom. We know that You measure people by the ways of God and not the ways of man, and we trust that Your judgment is all-knowing and sufficient. Melt away all of our impurities, and we thank you right now for the “flux” that comes into our lives to refine us to be even more pure. We understand that it may take several cycles of refining and that we will not be completed until the day that we join You in Heaven. After You have refined us, we know that You are faithful to heal us from the process and fill us up with Your Spirit in the areas that have been removed from the refining process. We give You all of our hearts, minds, and souls to become like pure gold in Your sight. We pray all of this in the precious name of Your Son, Jesus Christ!