Purification Process Making God’s People Weapons of War

Sometimes we can surprise ourselves by the way we act or the things we say. I’ve been surprised a lot lately by my own attitude problems. Each day, I’ve been fighting through it in my prayer time, pressing through until I know I have the victory, but then the next day I find myself right back in that same place again, so the whole process starts all over again. After a few days of that, it got to the point where it was hurting my confidence before God, making me think I must be way off the mark. How can God accept such a mess?
That’s where I was again earlier today, but again I pressed through it until I entered the secret place where I knew all was well, but this time, the Holy Spirit turned it around, so instead of hurting my faith, I was encouraged because He showed me it was all part of His purification process through which He is making His people into weapons of war, ready to fight in the great battles ahead.
I saw it was like the way metal is purified in a furnace when making a sword. Intense heat is applied to separate all the impurities so only the pure metal remains, as shown in this diagram.

Only the pure metal is used to make the sword. Then it’s polished until it shines brightly, reflecting the light. A finished sword can even appear transparent because it so clearly reflects the light, like the one shown here.
Like the sword, our refining process begins with the fiery furnace. Trials and afflictions force the ugly impurities in our heart to separate and rise to the surface so we can confess them and give them to God, which gives Him our permission to remove them from us, leaving only our pure devotion for Him.
As the impurities come to the surface, we hear our wrong attitudes, which for me sounded something like, “Come on God, you know you’re supposed to do this for me, right? After all I’ve done for you, the least you can do is help me out with this one request, right?”
Of course, I never get answers to those kind of stupid questions. He waits for me to finish and humble myself so we can move on.

Scripture References:
3 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place?
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.
5 He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. (Psalm 24:3-5)
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

Author: James Bailey

James Bailey is an author, business owner, husband and father of two children. His vision is to broadcast the good news of Jesus Christ through blog sites and other media outlets.