What is going on?
Going through a 12-week series by John Bevere in church small group -- heavy stuff. Talking about pursuing holiness, and letting the grace of God empower us to pursue holiness. One of the images he shares that I keep going back to is his explanation of how gold is refined (for the Bible often uses that imagery to describe the purification process of the human heart seeking after God): it's heated up in a furnace, the impurities float to the top, and the refiner skims them off and begins the process again. So, if we apply this to sanctification, that means that as we're heated up (trials), the impurities that were previously hidden come to the surface (ungodly attitudes and behaviors) -- and we then have the choice to either come to grips with that and let God skim the impurities away, or bury the impurities back inside, causing God to do the same thing again to deal with the same impurities.
I feel today that God is bringing some of my inpurities to the surface, and I don't know what to do with them. Which makes sense -- it's the refiner's job to skim them away, isn't it? It still requires a will on my part to submit to His work, for He will not do something like this (even if it's for my good) against my will. Sometimes I wish He would! :D So I'm trying my best to pray this through, to see my present discomfort as a necessary and a good part of what I truly desire, which is intimacy with the Lord, to not let it get me down or be fatalistic or try to escape the pain, but to let it complete the work God intended. And that means dealing with the pain, which is something I'm not good at -- from early in my life I've been taught that the way to deal with pain is to bury it, to ignore it, to find ways to placate it like a jungle cat -- and when it comes up again, to throw it a steak and hope that keeps it quiet a little while longer. It never really goes away, and you're never really in control of it -- but you can learn to live with it.
I don't want to be that way anymore. I want to let God remove those things entirely. God help me.
I feel today that God is bringing some of my inpurities to the surface, and I don't know what to do with them. Which makes sense -- it's the refiner's job to skim them away, isn't it? It still requires a will on my part to submit to His work, for He will not do something like this (even if it's for my good) against my will. Sometimes I wish He would! :D So I'm trying my best to pray this through, to see my present discomfort as a necessary and a good part of what I truly desire, which is intimacy with the Lord, to not let it get me down or be fatalistic or try to escape the pain, but to let it complete the work God intended. And that means dealing with the pain, which is something I'm not good at -- from early in my life I've been taught that the way to deal with pain is to bury it, to ignore it, to find ways to placate it like a jungle cat -- and when it comes up again, to throw it a steak and hope that keeps it quiet a little while longer. It never really goes away, and you're never really in control of it -- but you can learn to live with it.
I don't want to be that way anymore. I want to let God remove those things entirely. God help me.