Refinement

So it seems anymore that it isn’t the big things that are making me struggle, it is the little ones… these little places of required patience and love… those areas that are pretty much DAILY. I mean, the places of obvious fleshly desires are becoming less and less tempting… that is, I don’t constantly struggle with a temptation to drink or to swear or fury… you know, those areas that seem so huge for a time in this process of refinement. Rather, currently I find myself staring face to face with the “little things,”-the areas of constant denial and silence to the flesh.

The conversations that I know must be quieted before the Father’s name is shamed; indeed, this whole blameless thing is quite daily. When we proclaim, “Father, my life is yours, everything, I want to be like your Son” I think we believe ourselves to be making a deal of getting rid of the big things, like cancer. But the thing is, God is concerned with the entire body… the whole of it, that there be no impurity or uncleanliness found when we are brought before Him… and when those areas… especially the ones we protect, come under the scalpel in the master surgeon’s hand, we grimace, hoping He’ll put us under, yet He doesn’t. He wants us to undergo the process, to see that this purifying is not a removal of everything from our system as one would empty a vacuum cleaner bag, rather it is a process of submission and refinement like wood being sanded to smoothness… the rough, high grain paper used first, taking out the jagged edges and blemished areas, then gradually the grain is made finer, until the areas only a master woodworker would even notice as corrupt are smoothed and a fine, beautiful grain is revealed- the beauty that the eye of all revels at in its image while the Master celebrates in it’s detail and purity.

Indeed I believe this to be the process of most length… because we are so often willing to have the rough grain used, so everyone will see the difference, but less willing and even resistant to be refined and smoothed further as only the master will take pleasure in the result. This is a narrow way… the options most times are few if any… but in this desire for holiness… in this craving for His likeness so as to be found in His eye “clean,” we must be willing to have the little areas sanded and refined most enthusiastically. I say “willing to have” specifically, because let there be no mistake, it is our submission to His will that originates puts the tool in His hands, but He is the one working and refining. He is more concerned with the appearance and holiness of His bride than we are, and be sure that the scripture is true in saying that He is in fact the one completing the good work that He began in us. It is His action, His hand, and His desire. Let us praise Him for refinement, knowing that the beauty He is revealing cannot be brought by good intention or great hope. The little things matter to Him.
-G.N.