March 19 - When The Heat Is On

When The Heat Is On

“Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of His victory.”

1 Peter 1:7 (Message)

B.F. Westcott said, “Great occasions don’t make heroes or coward. They simply unveil them to the eyes of men.” The occasion doesn’t make you but just says who you are.  Most of us have found that trials will reveal something about our walk with Christ whether we like it or not.  In other words, you are going to get squeezed in life and how you handle those times of trials will reveal what is on the inside.  It is true with a tube of toothpaste and it’s true with you.   Jesus said, “You don’t know what’s in a tree until the fruit is revealed.” As our Lord relates, there is no greater indicator of a person’s spiritual life than when they face trials.  

Eugene Peterson’s Message translation always puts the “cookies on the bottom shelf” through his practical translation as it communicates God’s heart for us in the storms, trials and pressures of life:

James 1:2 states, “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.” 

Romans 5:3-4 adds, “There’s more to come: we continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.” 

Trials put us in the spin cycle of life and they shake things up, take things out, and put things in.  Murphy’s Laws has famously stated, “Nothing is as easy as it looks; everything takes longer than you think; if anything can go wrong it will.” and “A day without a crisis is a total loss.” Like Murphy, sometimes it’s hard to view problems as anything but detrimental in our lives, yet they are never wasted if given to God.

With aluminum the heat treating process is different from any other metal. The first thing you do is mold the product.  You have something that looks good but is not very strong and will bend and break. So you have to use a process called “heat treating.” Now with aluminum you have to heat the metal up to about 1000 degrees, just below the melting temperature.  If you go to 1100 degrees, you will liquefy the material. So you leave this metal at 1000 degrees for 10 hours. Then you drop it in a quenching tank of water which is 170 degrees. The moment that the metal hits the water, it disperses the atoms in the metal making the aluminum object very flexible. Then there is a thing that is called “natural aging.” This will occur within 24 to 30 hours after the quench. You must have the object bent into the correct shape within this period of time. Once the casting is straightened, it is placed into a heating device at 550 degrees for 8 hours which is called aging the casting. This is what causes the casting to become hard and allows it to hold its shape. While not trying to make you a metallurgist, we can see the similarities in God’s delicate and refining process in our lives. The Master refiner knows exactly what He is doing at all times.  

As with others, God has been in the refining process throughout the millenniums. The process is not a new one.  “Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of His victory,” writes Peter in the New Testament. (1 Peter 1:7)  The prophet Jeremiah preceded the lesson on “potter-ology” in chapter 18, as we are shaped by His hands. 

“Inside every large problem is a series of small problems struggling to get out,” Murphy would add.  However, I would counter with the idea that inside every large (or small) problem is the potential for God to do something bigger and better through us if we let Him. Even Murphy would have a problem disagreeing with that.  

Terry Risser

Reflections:

1)   On a scale from 1-10, assess the most difficult situation you are facing.

2)   Compare it to God and ask Him how He might use it today.

Consider reading the Word today:

 

Copyright 2014- Terry Risser