30 Days of Praise-Day 5 1 Peter 1:3-7

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

This passage of Scripture gives me chills. It's such a powerful truth and the basis of our faith. Through Jesus's death on the cross we are born into a "living hope"...the hope of our eternal inheritance that we will one day receive when we get to heaven. I am reminded of another verse in II Corinthians 4:17:

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all.

When we go through hard times we can either have a pity party and wonder why God is allowing them to happen (which is a natural human reaction-no judgement intended) or we can rejoice because we know God is refining us. I think it's interesting how the Scriptures compare our faith and the refinement of our faith to gold. In the dictionary, “Refine” means several things:

*to reduce to a pure state, as with sugar, metal, or oil
*to free from moral imperfection
*to improve by pruning or polishing
*to free from what is coarse, vulgar, or uncouth, as with a refined person

Gold has to go through a fire so that all its impurities rise to the surface to be removed. Without this process, it's not "pure" and doesn't have a lot of value. However, it can be completely destroyed if the fire gets too hot (vs.7 above). So much more is true of the refining of our faith, which is "of greater worth than gold", and actually withstands the fires of our trials if we allow it to do its work. It comes out on the other side with more value than one of the most precious metals on earth-gold.

The only way to be purified is to go through the fire. One of the excerpts I read about the process of refining gold stated "The purer the gold is, the more difficult will be the process of refining." This might not sound like good news but maybe explains why trials and life gets a little more difficult the closer we get to reflecting and emulating the Lord. Even though its difficult, I wonder what would happen if we changed our perspective when hard times come upon us. If I know that God is working together all things for the good of those who love Him, submitting to the refining process in my life might be a little easier...welcomed even. I want to be like the purest gold-closer and closer to revealing Christ in my life and actions.