Mining & Purifying

High in the surrounding mountains of the town stood white colored expansive flats. Large tractors can be seen moving dirt all hours of the day and night. These are copper mines, the place where the red soil is unearthed, put through various straining processes to derive the copper from the earth. Once the copper is removed, the soil is then put through other purification processes to remove other trace elements that are needed for our technological time. Some are extracted with water, some heat, some fire, and some are sifted. What is left, is a white, lifeless, chalk-like soil that no longer has the capacity to hold life, as it has been emptied of itself. 

How like Christ, who came into humanity, fully God and fully man. He could have ruled this world as King, with all power and wisdom, but He chose to pour Himself out for us… “He emptied Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” For a time, He removed His Royal garment and put on a servant’s clothes. (Philippians 2:7,8).

Although He held All knowledge, He didn’t use it as a club over us, but with kindness and humility He showed us what true love and leadership looks like. “He did not come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). With all we were doing wrong, He still chose to come in grace and truth to show us the Better Way. 

Friends, when we feel the fires of life bearing down on us, we can fight it and stand resolute in our own superior pride, or we can exclaim as the Psalmist did, “For You have tried and tested us, Oh God. You have refined us as silver” (Psalm 66:10). There is a usefulness to allowing God to refine us; we become vessels of honor in His hands; what was once unusable and purposeless now has a Divine worth. 

But we must first be refined, poured out, sifted, and made ready. Can this be accomplished while holding onto our pride? Never. Can we allow God to mold us and make us after His likeness when we demand that our own “draft” of ourselves is maintained? Never. 

Friends, we have one life, one shot to get this right. It is never too late to humble ourselves before God and ask Him to empty us of ourselves that we may be instruments of His goodness in this broken world. Anything else, is just pride trying to wear humility’s clothing. It’s unusable. May we sincerely allow God to mine us, to refine us, to sift us, to empty us of ourselves - all for His eternal Glory. When it comes to our growth, nothing else matters quite like this.

(Devotional by Cheryl Hall-Laos)