The Refiners Fire

“ but who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like laundrer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver, He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, they may offer to award and offering and righteousness” -Malachi 3:2-3

The Lord is a master designer of people, the Creator of all He calls “very good,” and His Word proves over and over that He is a skilled restorer of broken things. God has a design and purpose for every human life, but the shaping we experience in the fallen world means God will need to reshape us in the refiners fire to make us more like him.

We all experience seasons of difficulty in our lives where it feels like we are in the refiner’s fire. Where we feel like we are being challenged, the ground we once felt stable is being shaken.

Many people struggle under the intensity of the refiner’s fire that God uses to shake them, and as a result, they walk out of it and never experience the fullness. God intended for them to have.

The refiners buyer is a process where we can become more like Him.

Isaiah 48:10 God speaks, “See, I have refined you, though not as silver, I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.” silver, and gold and iron are refined with a smelting process where it is converted into Molten liquid. 

Working with these needs skilled hands of a master designer to bring out their best qualities, but their processes are very different.

In our walk-through life, we can see God working on us and purifying us versus reshaping and strengthening us. We walk through very different seasons of fire that we need for spiritual transformation.

Looking at the process of shaping iron. Once iron is forged in the fire, it must then be pounded over and over with the hammer to begin to shape it. As it begins to cool its color begins to change in order to be softened again, it must be placed back into the fire to be red again and pliable. Each time it goes back into the fire. It has a new shape. Every twist and mark shapes it. Each time it needs another reshaping, the iron goes back into the fire. Pounding, squeezing, twisting into a shape it was meant to be.

There’s iron strength in us and the Lord sees it.

We are not born strong in the Lord. We are born into sin and spiritual weakness, but the Lord is with us, and he will be our strength if we will bind ourselves to Him with faith.

God promises in Isaiah 43:2, “When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, and the flame will not scorch you.”

Don’t fear the fire. God even uses the enemies fire to refine us and strengthen us. Genesis 50 shows that what our enemy means to causes harm, God will use it to bring good.

When God controls the fire, there is purpose, beauty, strength, protection, revelation, miracles and transformation.

Whatever is going on in our lives we should give God the glory and we will emerge from the refiner’s fire fundamentally changed, unbreakable, and shaped into a thing of beauty and He will put you to His good use.

All fire has a purpose that God uses to transform and shape us -shape us and strengthen us and design us perfectly for what He needs.

Trust God, lean on Him, and draw closer to Him. Worship Him and give thanks. He sees strength in you that you don’t see in yourself.