From The Crucible (by Pastor Linda Pugsley)

The statement of laying down our lives rolls so easily off the tongue but is so difficult to do! We are to be a “refreshment” to others, a fresh, cool breeze. Unfortunately, we often are just a bunch of hot air instead.

Our great and wise God knows how to train us to be just such a refreshment, though. He uses our sufferings! But how can this be? Oswald Chambers addresses this when he states, “My attitude as a saint to sorrow and difficulty is not to ask that they may be prevented, but to ask that I may preserve the self that God created me to be through every fire of sorrow. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life; it is no use saying sorrow ought not to be. Sin and sorrow and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them. Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better. Suffering either gives me myself or it destroys myself. The way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow…if a man has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous; he has no time for you. If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.”

That is a tall order folks, but by the grace of God, not our own abilities, we are able to do all things in Christ Jesus. Don’t fight that suffering and sorrow, but rather fly to the arms of the Lord that He would clarify all that is going on in the suffering and sorrow. We NEED to have the sick, putrid, no-good, junky parts of us burned out and that is done in the fiery trials. In all things, praise God. Endure the fire…it’s producing pure gold!

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