Refining

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Isa 48:10

For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Ps. 22:24

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:20-21

It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. Ps. 119:71

“Affliction is both a medicine if we sin, and a preservative that we sin not.”
–Richard Hooker, The Works of Richard Hooker: Tractates and Sermons

Affliction is a tool of punishing, but also one of teaching. God’s people suffer in the world because they, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, were made for another world. We don’t belong here. We are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”(Heb 11:13) and as such, we do not have a place of our own, a place to hunker down in and stay put. Nothing here on earth can fill the place of God. 

We are temples of Christ here on earth, but we must abide in Him as well.(Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. John 15:4) We are to be anchored in Christ. Our sustenance comes from the Vine: He is the One with roots, we are the wanderers, who find our place in Him.

Too often we attempt to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts with things, be they people, money, possessions, sports, or food. God commands us to worship Him alone, forsaking idols. When we do, we will grow in grace under God’s protection and produce fruit.

Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? [And God says] I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found. Hosea 14:8

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and the thing that keeps coming up is the fact that having possessions and having a desire for certain things (such as marriage) is not wrong, rather it is when we begin treating them like the answer to our emptiness that they become our idols and stumbling blocks.

 A. W. Tozer puts it this way, in his book, The Pursuit of God:

There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things’ with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my’ and `mine’ look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

It is difficult, since very often these things are comfortable and comforting, a refuge from the blows of the world. Just like a child must give up sucking his thumb/soother (or face the inevitable laughter of his school mates), we must give up these false comforters and find our Refuge in the true Comforter. Sometimes, it is necessary to cut ourselves off entirely from these things (Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?) in order to break our dependence on them. We may be able to reintroduce some things back into our lives, but we have to be aware that it will easy to fall back into old habits. The old nature is, as Joanna Weaver says in her book Having a Mary Spirit, our default mode and when we “crash” (as we will do–we’re not perfect after all), it will be the program that turns up most often.

However, we do not have to do this on our own–indeed, we cannot–God places the will and the strength in our hearts to divorce ourselves from these petty “lovers.” In C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Eustace, who has, through loving dragon hoard, turned into a dragon, that before he can enter the pool and become human again,”first you must undress”–remove the dragon scales that cover him. Eustace scrapes away gamely, but each layer removed reveals another underneath. Finally, Aslan offers to help him and Eustace accepts (remaining afraid of the Lion’s sharp claws). The skin Aslan pulls off is much thicker than those Eustace had shed by himself and it hurt when it was removed.

The same thing happens when we scrape away at our old nature, we take away single layers, but God can remove much more with a single “claw”– affliction — in any guise Him choses. Not everyone requires a world-shattering tragedy to remove their dependence on “things.” God uses affliction in our lives to refine us,burning away the dross in our lives in “the furnace of affliction.” God knows how much we can stand and He will adjust the “temperature” to our individual requirements.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [also can be translated "tested"] above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1Cor 10:13

God also uses affliction to guide us and bring us closer to Himself.

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: Isa. 30:20

If we, instead of complaining, humble ourselves under His Hand and allow God to show us His working, we will see how “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

And He will not leave us alone to struggle on blindly, but “will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: [He] will guide thee with [His] eye” (Ps.32:8). Not only will He guide us with His eye, but He will speak to us in a “still, small voice”–

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:21

We may not be aware at the time how God is working, but we may be sure that His purpose is to our future good–we have already been redeemed, now we are just waiting for our Bridegroom to come and take us home.