Purified Seven Times

One thing can be sure about the Christian experience - the Lord tests the hearts of people. Psalm 11:5 states, "The Lord tests and proves the [unyieldingly] righteous, but His soul abhors the wicked .." (Amplified).

There are so many Scriptures about God testing the hearts of men and women. They often refer to him testing us like gold, silver or other precious metals. This imagry is intentional. We must understand the purposes of God in testing us.

The word "tests" in the original language is "bachan," which means God proves us - proves that our hearts are true, or that He tests us to produce gold.

The process by which gold or silver are purified is that they are put through extreme heat. In the same way, God tests our hearts, purifies our motives and brings us forth as the precious, kind hearted people that He has called us to be. He tests us with a singular goal - to bring us forward, better and more precious for His purposes.

This process produces in us a life more like Christ. A few verses later, in Psalms chapter 12, verse 6 - "The words and promises of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in an earthen furnace, purified seven times over." God process for His own words and promises is the same - they have been tested and they are true. There are no impurities in them.

We must understand as humans, what Moliere once said: "men are alike in their promises; it is only in their deeds that they differ." The Apostles made this faux pas with Jesus over and over again in the account of the Gospels - they made promises and statements to Jesus about their own spirituality that they couldn't back up with their lives. God was at work in them, and remains at work in us to shore up our hearts and make our hearts and our words true through the process of refining us.

The heat is on.