Church Volume One: An 8 Day Devotional By Jesus CultureSample

Gold  -  Katie Torwalt

The Bible talks about being refined by fire. We pray bold prayers asking for something lasting and eternal, but it’s easy to forget about what that looks like. Do we really want God to burn away the unhealthy parts of our life that don’t bring us closer to him? 

One day I was driving home feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. As I was talking to Jesus and worshipping I remember noticing a street that I had probably driven by hundreds of times like it was the first time. The name of the street was “Refinement” road, and it hit me that God was taking me through a season of refinement. It was an uncomfortable time in life to say the least, being stretched in ways I never had before. I wasn’t finding the same level of fulfillment or happiness that I once had in certain things. Things that easily distracted me from my pain or purpose and kept me almost numb weren’t as accessible. Somehow, I saw the beauty of what God was doing in my life. He was refining me, my calling, my identity, and my reason for existing. Bringing it back to the place of loving and being loved by Him.  

Throughout the Psalms and the life of David, you see him continually praying for God to “give him clean hands and a pure heart”, and like in this Psalm, “create in me a clean heart O God”. As King David encountered more and more of the goodness of God, it led to a heart cry of wanting to be refined by His Presence. He wanted to know Him, and to be like Him.

As we return back to the basics of His word and our love for Jesus, not only are we healed, but we become more like him. Gold is refined for its purity and the Holy Spirit helps refine us for the same reason: to purify our hearts.