Be Refined

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10 NIV

My prayer has always been for growth. I want to be a woman after God’s heart. I long for a purity that could only come from loving Him and having His heart. I’ve come a long way from when I began, but I am aware that I still have a long way to go.

      He is in the process of refining me. Because I’m in the process, I see Him bringing more of my impurities up and out. It can be discouraging.
      Seeing parts of the past me and my attitude come back up makes me start to question my growth. I start thinking I’m not good. I begin to question the sincerity of my salvation. I wonder if I was wearing a mask the whole time and forgot about it.
      All these negative thoughts flood and hurt me. They make me feel like instead of moving forward with Him, I’ve only moved backward.

      Fortunately, I love a God who adores me. He sees the confusion and pain I put myself through and steps in to clear the clutter. He gives me the right perspective.
      He shows me that He isn’t refining me because I’m not good. He’s doing it so I can be better. My uglies are coming out because He wants to get rid of them.
      You can’t work on getting rid of something unless you are aware that it’s there. If He has you in the same process, don’t be discouraged. He is setting you apart.
       Malachi 3:3a says,”He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.” This chapter is a prophecy for Jesus’ coming. The gospels follow after this book and we can see how Jesus refined some people. We can also see how other people were stubborn and refused to be refined.
      This is a process that He continues today. God refines and purifies us throughout our lives. This is why we continue to get those growing pains. It hurts to be purified.
      The verse in Malachi says that He will refine His people like gold and silver. Impure (unrefined) gold often has a mixture of different materials (like clay and gravel). It takes agitating the gold to separate it from these materials.
      We’re so enmeshed with the world, that God has to agitate us a lot of times to get us to separate from it. During the process it may seem like He is breaking us, but really He is breaking off the pieces that shouldn’t be there. He is refining us and making us pure so that, like refined gold, we will be able to reflect.
      The psalmist of Psalm 51:10 knew that asking for a pure heart would require change and a lot of discomfort, that’s why he asked for a “steadfast spirit”. It takes a lot to stay firm and rooted in Him while we’re being purified and refined, but when we allow Him to do so, we (and others) will be able to see His image reflected off us.
      If not, then we’ll continue to be mixed in with the world and won’t reflect Him. He’ll come back one day and we’ll go to Him expecting to be taken with Him, but He’ll say He never knew us. He never saw us when He looked around because we refused to be a reflection of His love and image. Instead, we let His reflection be covered up by the garbage of this world.
      Let Him refine you. It will hurt for a while, but never as much as Him telling you He never knew you and you realizing you ran out of time.