Grace full mama

“When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through the rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.”

I recently sat in a church and prayed for a miracle with other believers… contending is good. Miracles are good. But sometimes, God has a better, bigger plan than what we can see. This is why we were taught to pray saying “Your will be done. Your Kingdom come.” I listened to people cry out to God telling him that our church needed a miracle to spark revival. We needed to see him move. My Spirit quivered as I remembered Jesus in his hometown… with people telling him that they would believe in him if he would perform signs and wonders. There is nothing wrong with crying out to God and asking him for something, but the truth is, our faith is not built in the times he clearly answers our prayers. Our faith is built in the nevertheless. Our faith is built in the Job moments of “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

Faith is looking up from the dust and declaring that God. Is. Still. Good.

Trust me on this. I have been there, laying in the dust. I have questioned his goodness. And then, I have found it.

That sweet place in our faith where we talk to Jesus and are absolutely untouchable by fear only comes when the only thing that matters to us is that we are in step with him. It comes from giving up everything. Everything. Kids. Marriage. Money. Security. Respect. Reputation. Release it all, friends. He is the pearl of great price. Don’t hold anything back. Don’t expect that you get to be the captain of your ship and still walk on water. It doesn’t work that way.

You would think that when a government begins to stricly penalize and kill Christians, less people would come to know Jesus. But… you would be dead wrong. Consider Iran. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is punishable by imprisonment or death in Iran, Since 1990. Guess what? Iran is also the fastest growing Christian movement in the world today.

Have you ever prayed for God’s refining fire? I hope so! But do you really know what that means?

Gold is refined using these steps.

1. It is crushed and broken. Gold starts out mixed with rock. It needs to be crushed and ground into small particles, exposing the gold so that it can be separated.
2. The crushed rock is washed so that the gold can sink and the lighter materials can be taken out. This creates gold concentrate.
3. The gold is now heated in a furnace at over 1832 degrees F. Fluxes such as borax are added to bind with the impurities and bring them to the surface as slag, to be removed. The heat does not destroy the gold. It reveals what is not gold that needs to be removed.
4. Now the gold is heated again in a porous crucible. The base metals are absorbed by the crucible, leaving only the gold or silver.
5. This process continues again and again until no impurities remain in the gold. The longer gold remains in the fire, the more pure it becomes. Once it has been refined, gold does not burn, corrode or decay.

You can’t tell from just looking at gold whether it is pure or not. You can only find those impurities by heating it and seeing what comes to the surface.

In the same way, you may not find your unbelief, selfishness, or idols unless you are heated. “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” Job 23:10

Make sure that when hard things come, you allow him to strain out the slag that comes to the surface. Don’t hang onto it. You don’t need it. The fire is beautiful. This hard thing that you are going through is the thing that is going to shape you into the image of Christ… it will open up your spirit so that you can hear his voice. It will activate your ministry.

Remember Meshak, Shadrack, and Abednego? Who was in the furnace with them? Jesus was standing right beside them! You will never swim the deep waters or stand in the furnace alone. Those are the times that Jesus will become more real to you than he has ever been before.

When the fire gets hot… run towards him.