#AriseRefined

By: Kolleen Lucariello

When I was a young babe in the Lord, I was quick to blame every disturbance, disruption, or deficiency on the devil. Perhaps this belief had been instilled in me by a t-shirt I remember wearing as a child. In big, bold letters it read, "The Devil made me do it." (Funny, but I don't remember my siblings wearing a similar shirt with this declaration of behavioral matters posted upon them. Mom???). Any how... blaming the devil became a natural response shaped by the people within my circle of influence at the time. If something wasn't working out the way you expected then the devil was—as they say—in the details.

He was the cause of every delay. He was behind each disappointment. He was the interference seeking to create chaos and disorder to my life. That is, until one day when my car wouldn’t start and my plans were disrupted. This led to another type of disruption—the emotional kind. As anger spewed from my lips, I began to berate the devil for his repeated attacks on my life. Until I felt my insides begin to twist. In the middle of my temper tantrum I suddenly had this thought, You can focus on what you believe the devil is doing to you or give thanks and praise to God for what he is doing for you. Say what? What was God doing for me by ruining my plans?

Nestled there beside the intense emotional tsunami with me was an invitation to pause, take a breath, and consider another option. Where the devil was at work, God could be, too. The devil – aka the thief – seeks to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). However, just because that's who he is, doesn't mean he gets to define who I am. The day I realized this was a day of new beginnings for me. I began to understand that God had alternative strategies for my emotional responses when I encountered discomfort, disruption or displeasure. The devil hates it when I thank God for using my emotional highs and lows as opportunities to refine me rather than define me.

I will admit, the refining process isn't necessarily a pleasant one. It's messy and rather painful at times, actually. We can compare it to the natural process and see why. Refining requires removal of impurities through heat – intense heat. A smelter takes unrefined silver, which is often mixed with other minerals and rocks and grayish in appearance, and emerges it in a container called a crucible. As it is melted down within the crucible the unwanted materials, called the dross, rise to the surface and are scooped off. If you're wondering what dross is, it's garbage. Merriam-Webster defines it as "the scum or unwanted material that forms on the surface of molten metal." Nice. The process continues until the silver shines. That beautiful, bright, shiny silver that we so appreciate is not what is once was.

In the Scriptures, God is described "as a smelter and purifier of silver" (Malachi 3:3, LSB). The Psalmist shares that it was God who tested and "refined them as silver is refined” (Psalm 66:10). I appreciate how the people had come to recognize God was behind their testing. We also discover from Proverbs 17:3 that, "The crucible is for refining silver and the furnace is for gold, likewise the Lord tests hearts" (NET). God allows testing to reveal, cleanse and purify impurities. As silver is refined, so are we.

The word tested in Hebrew is translated from bāḥan and means to examine, scrutinise, to test, prove, try. It's important to not mix this up: the devil seeks to steal, (commit a theft), kill (immolate), and destroy (render useless), but God seeks to purify by taking a thorough examination of our insides—the heart. Interesting that God uses heat to purify and the word immolate is defined as, "to kill or destroy especially by fire or to kill as a sacrificial victim." Clearly, One intends to use heat to improve us and the other uses it to impair us.

God examines and scrutinises our heart, not to crush and kill us, but for the purpose of skimming off the impurities that the devil wants to use against us. If we don't allow God to get to our emotions first, you can bet the devil is going to use them to destroy anyone he can. Who becomes your sacrificial victim when the heat of emotion begins to rise from the deep? If we don't take the time to pause when we feel it and then allow God to show us the dross, we will likely have a mess to clean up.

Do you know what becomes an obstacle to this? Self-gratification. Ouch! That's a hard hit, isn't it? In a culture with a steady diet of self, God asks us to stop and consider if self-gratification limits the refining process. Self-gratification: "the act of pleasing oneself or of satisfying one's desires." Ouch, again. I'm guilty of knowing better, but not doing better because self-gratification was easier.

• I knew my words had been created to condemn rather than commend because of the wounds I carried, but I said them regardless.

• I allowed my emotions to drive me and take me to places I would later regret because it was satisfying.

• I was unfamiliar with the emotions and sensed the pain attached was easier to ignore than endure.

• It brings me great satisfaction to hurt you now because you hurt me then.

I believe God desperately wants to help us avoid emotional shipwreck by recognizing our emotions are key to the process. We overcome self-limiting beliefs through God's refining fire, but we will be limited when we cave to the devil's destructive fire. This happens when we remove old thought patterns. Did the devil really make you explode in that fit of rage or did God turn up the heat and allow you to see there's dross and he wants to remove it? Was the temptation really too much to overcome if Scripture reveals God provides a way out for us? (see 1 Corinthians 10:13).

I had no idea that silver was the most reflective medal. How cool is it that the process of refining in the Scriptures uses the most reflective medal to express his reasoning for the testing of his people. We can choose to see testing as an opportunity to unleash the storm of emotion or #AriseRefined and become the most reflective of Jesus. I hope you will join us for the conversation this month at an Activ8Her chapter near you.