Beauty in the Refining

Refine me. A prayer I often pray. To be honest, as I pray this prayer, there's a fear of the process. What is the refining going to look like? But there's a joy that triumphs over the fear because I know that no matter the process, when He is my Refiner, the outcome will be better than I could imagine. Without the process, the outcome wouldn't be beautiful. Without the process, there'd be no story. It's important for us to always be in this position of being open and expectant to refinement. It's a different type of surrender knowing that we are not where we should be and allowing and wanting Him to shape, change, remove, and process us in a way to make us more like Him. The refining process of gold requires heat and pressure, and molding, the pruning process of a plant requires cutting off what isn't bearing fruit. Both the refining and the pruning require perseverance, diligence, pain. and difficulty. But these hard processes are vital to get the purest gold and the best fruits. These processes are necessary in our spiritual lives to continue to shape us and mold us more into the man/woman of God that He has created each of us to be.

So, yes, the refining process requires us to be put under fire. It requires difficulty and pain. But, if in the end, we become more like Him, we draw nearer to Him, we grow in our relationship with Him, then every bit of fire, every ounce of pain was worth it. Pray to be refined, molded, and pruned. Don't let the inevitable difficulty stop you. If you trust Him as your Refiner, you'll trust His process. He knows the outcome. The refining process of gold takes away all the impurities, anything that isn't gold and keeping it from being pure. Let us be vulnerable enough to come to God and say, "refine me." Let Him refine us like gold so that anything that's keeping us from Him, anything that's keeping us from being pure would be removed, no matter how difficult the process may be. If it's keeping me from Him, from being like Him, from pursuing Him, remove it. The refining process isn't about you, it's about Him. The refining is getting less of you and more of Him. Not only do we get to experience the beauty and joy of being refined. There's a freedom we get to experience as well. Free from the impurities, the things that were holding us back from being all in with Him and from Him.