Being Purified as Gold
Dear Cornerstone Family,
I remember the day when my 20 year old son set out to be a gold miner in Alaska’s placer gold fields. In his youthful exuberance, he looked at it as an adventure and, from my fatherly experience, I knew my son was headed for extreme hardship and toil. Months into his “adventure” I visited him in the far north. Jon was living in an ice cold shack without indoor plumbing and sleeping with his dog inside his sleeping bag to keep warm. He worked a twelve hour night shift driving a hydraulic loader so huge that the tops of the tires rose twelve feet in the air. The placer mine stubbornly produced a small amount of gold only when the miners removed a mountain of dirt and got down to gold ore at bedrock. Then the precious gold ore was dropped into a mill that ran the unprocessed ore through a series of separators, water sleuth boxes, shaker tables and fine screens. I watched this gold mining operation for a couple of hours when the mine foreman showed up. He took me to a small box in the side of the mill. When he opened the box, I saw the tiny tailings of gold that had collected inside after processing tons of rock and sand. But the painstaking process was still not over. The raw gold had to be placed in a crucible and put under tremendous heat until the metal melted down into liquid form. I remember peering down into the white hot crucible and thinking to myself, “no wonder they call gold a PRECIOUS metal.” At the end of the long process, the gold was poured and weighed. Only after this long and painful process and only in this pure form could the gold be highly valued.
So when the apostle Peter wrote his letter to Christians who were suffering through intense trials he wrote these words: "These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world." (1 Peter 1:7 NLT) Peter took his fellow persecuted believers to the gold mine to teach them important spiritual truths about trials. Allow me to help you process and apply the spiritual “gold" in this verse. Here are some priceless truths:
1. God uses trials to authenticate your faith.
• Untested faith is only theoretical.
• Faith requires us to get into the ring of fire.
2. Trials are to faith what fire is to gold.
• The purpose of fire is to refine gold.
• God’s plan for tests is to refine the spiritual gold of Christlike character.
3. At His coming, Jesus will reward those whose faith has been refined through testing.
• Testing is a painstaking lifelong experience that finally ends in a glorious reward.
• The payout of passing a test is yet to come.
We are living through the current pandemic with its threats, fears, annoyances, inconveniences, losses, concerns, isolation and uncertainties. My questions to you are these: How are you doing? What feelings are predominating? What losses have you experienced? What gains have you claimed? Most importantly, what spiritual gold are you allowing God to refine in you? Has your trial made you more merciful to others? Has your prayer life increased? Are you turning from temptation? Have you taken more time with God? Are you sharing your faith with family and neighbors? Are you placing your hope in Christ’s coming?
The great preacher C. H. Spurgeon wrote, "Trials are like a fire; they burn up nothing in us but the dross, and they make the gold all the purer. Put down the testing process as a clear gain, and, instead of being sorry about it, count it all joy when you fall into many trials, for this gives you a proof of your faith.”
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