The Crucible

The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.
-Proverbs 17:3

Back in the day they used to remove impurities from precious metals using a crucible. They would put the ore into the furnace and heat it until it literally melted into a molten form. When this happens, all the impurities in the metal separate out and float up to the top - they could then be skimmed off and removed. The metal was then re-heated, re-melted, and the process repeated. Over and over.

This is what life with Jesus is like. Many people think that Christianity is about solving all your personal problems, that Jesus exists to somehow make us happy, and that God is interested in playing a part in our story.

It's not.

Christianity is about a God who sacrificed everything to ransom you so that you could play a role in HIS story - and so that he could re-create you as you were originally meant to be. The experience of being refined by fire this way - being melted so that the impurities and imperfections rise to the top and are exposed - is excruciating. It's humbling. It's exposure in the most naked sense of the word.

And that is God's purpose in it.

God is not interested in my happiness, my comfort, or my security - though he does want to give those things through himself to us. But the purpose of his existence is not to provide those things to me and the purpose of my life is not to seek those things.

Because of Christ's sacrifice in our stead, we are covered in His righteousness. This means that when we surrender ourselves to Jesus, God literally sees us as he sees Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5:21 "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Reading that stirs such incredible emotions in me - the concept that the God of the universe looks at me, this filthy man, and sees nothing but purity. The image he sees does not conform to the reality that I see.

And that is exactly why we go into the crucible.

The crucible - the sanctification through suffering with Jesus - is necessary because what God sees must become reality. We must be transformed into greater likeness of Jesus because we belong to him and he is holy. When you suffer, God is literally molding you to conform to what he already sees.

Does that concept not make your mouth drop open in awe?