Crucibles

Matthew 16 says, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Life is often difficult and overwhelming. Before we know what has happened, we have become consumed by our circumstances. Have you ever heard about the frog in the water? Take a pot of hot water and throw the frog into the pot. What do you think will happen? The obvious, of course: the frog will jump out. Take a pot of cold water, put the frog in it, and place the pot on the stove. Turn on the heat. This time something different will occur. The frog, because of the incremental change in temperature, will not notice that it is slowly being boiled. Have you seen that happening to you lately? I realized recently that was exactly what was happening to me!! Slow increments of increasing stressors and before I knew it; I had gotten out of the zone with my walk with God. I was spending so much time putting out fires, or worrying about fires, that I had lost my peace.
Maybe you have major changes going on and with that change come serious challenges and choices. It is so easy to get caught up in the immediate and lose our soul-fullness. We allow numbness to slip in without even recognizing it is happening. The good news is that none of these things are wasted in the life of a servant of God. One thing I am convinced of: We need the presence of God in the middle of our daily life. If not, we will be diluted and weakened in our service to our King. We need to renew our commitment to pursuing and experiencing God.
Where are you? How is it with your soul? Maybe you haven’t been able to quite put you’re your finger on it, but you know something is missing. Where is your passion? Has your walk become mechanical? Has life become just another day?” Maybe you are in a season when all is well, but there will come times when if we aren’t careful to guard our hearts and souls, we can be weakened to the point of just living by rote.
God wants to take us deeper into the transformation process with every day, week, month and year that we are on this earth. Spiritual transformation is that process where Christ is formed in us for the glory of God, for the abundance of our own lives and for the sake of others. A crucible is defined as a container for melting something or a place or set of circumstances where people or things are subjected to forces that test them and often make them change. Are you in a crucible? Like it or not, the fire is being turned up on God’s people…and He has allowed it for our good and His purposes.
I have been in a crucible and as a result, I have decided to embrace it, not run away from it. I challenge you to join me and surrender to the sovereignty of our Almighty God, trusting that no matter what happens in our lives, it was first sifted through His hands and He is ultimately in control! One of our staff recently made a great point. We were talking about having God in a box. She said, “He isn’t in the box, we are!” She was so right! He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. He knows all things and even more importantly, His love is everlasting. He wants to stretch us into more growth even in the midst of our difficult circumstance; to transform us to a deeper dimension in our relationship with Him. He loves us. I want to join him in a new level of transformation. He is not in the box, I am…and I am jumping out to join Him. Will you?