Fire is...good?

Read:

Malachi 3:2–3 (NKJV) "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a **refiner’s fire** and like launderers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness."

What it is saying to me today:

Fire=burn=bad. (in my best caveman speak)

We are all raised to understand that fire is dangerous. It burns, it destroys things, it hurts, stay away. I am not arguing against the conventional wisdom of this. It makes sense and spared me many many childhood burns.

But the downside of being programmed into viewing fire this way is that it is easy to read verse's like this and see the refining fire as something to avoid because as we all know: fire=bad. We don't want to be burned, even if that burning seems to be coming from the Lord.

But what if in this case, fire isn't bad?

A refining fire in metalworking is meant to remove the impurities, the junk dirt and minerals that gets mixed in with the valuable metal ore. When the metal ore has those impurities removed, it is stronger, more malleable, more useful, which ultimately means more valuable. It reaches it's highest value.

The only way to accomplish that is to put it through a refining fire. And the same is true of you and I. The Lord wants to refine because He knows how valuable we are. How much stronger we can be, how much more malleable and useful we can be when we have the junk of sin, and immaturity burned away. The verse ends with the result of this purifying: righteousness. We want refining that leads to righteousness. That is our "highest value".

So the refining fire that the Lord brings to our lives doesn't follow the paradigm of: fire=bad.

The new paradigm is: fire=good. (in my best caveman speak)

What is it saying to you?

Think of a time when you felt like you were in a refining fire from the Lord.

How was it uncomfortable?

But also, what was refined out of you?

What did you learn?

How were you made better coming out the other side of it?

What are we going to do about it?

If we face a trial- small or large- today, perhaps it's a small refining fire. Let's take the opportunity to have a tiny impurity removed, so that you and I can become more like Christ today.