Note: What follows
are excerpts of the first sermon I preached, June 7, 1978
If you’ve worked with gold, or know something about gold, you know it
begins as ore, dug right out of the earth – then it has to be washed. When gold is in ore form, combined with all
that dirt and other elements, it’s not useable.
When the gold is washed, separated from the other impurities, it’s still
not fit for use; a gold nugget is no good; it’s only mostly pure, but still needing preparation
for useability. The final process is the
fire; gold is melted-down to remove any other elements that might hamper its
most productive state.
That’s the way a lot of Christians are, we make a decision for Christ, and
we’re only a raw possibility at that point.
We’re washed by the blood of Christ, much like the ore that’s been
washed…quite pure, we are washed by the blood, and forgiven, but still not ready for His best use; not unless we
yield to the fire. The prophet Isaiah
said: Behold, I have
refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of
affliction.Isaiah 48:10 (KJV)
Of course Isaiah wasn’t talking about the gold or silver you dig out of
the ground. He was talking about the
gold of your life’s possibilities that have been yielded to the fire, refined,
and molded into something ready to be used.
But he knoweth the
way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Job 23:10(KJV).
Elizabeth and I have been praying for her mother and father. This morning (1978) my
mother-in-law is in a hospital room in Port Richey. She had two heart attacks this week, not just
one. She had one that put her in the
hospital; she wouldn’t give up – she had another; that’s two strikes. I will tell you something; we have been
praying for her for a long time, for her salvation, and her husband’s.
Update
to 1983. Elizabeth’s Mom died this
year. After she was gone, we were going
through her belongings and found the answer to our prayers. It was her Bible, given to her by a visiting
pastor. On the flyleaf was written in
her hand, and dated shortly before she died, this inscription: “Sofie saved”!
The Holy Spirit tugs at a heart…gently, ever so gently. The Holy Spirit deals gently with us until we
come to a point. How hard the Holy
Spirit tugs at your heart is up to you.
Repentance, turning from sin, is the only thing that interrupts the consequences
of our sin from something drastic being done to get our attention. When you have people praying for you, that
you’ll turn to the LORD, but you keep turning away, you’re going to benefit from God’s chastisement.
We know what chastisement is, and we know why…it’s a purging, a
cleansing. Now, how do we benefit from it? Paul’s letter to the Roman believers tells
us:
And we know that all
things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose. Romans 8:28(KJV)
Our life is like the gold, dug out of the ground, raw possibility, but
still needing the discipline of shaping for God’s good uses. It needs to be yielded to the fire of God’s’
purifying character, making us fit for His purposes.
For You Today
Chastisement, the move of God to discipline, teach, correct,
and mature his children, comes in many forms:
experiencing problems, sickness, financial difficulties, and a myriad of
other roads we walk. One thing always
common to chastisement is the experience gets
our attention. This is God’s blessed way of training his
loved ones into a peaceful harvest of
right living.
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
Seeing and Following
the Light… Part 1 and Part 2
and Part
3
[1] Images: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
