Tried in the Fire

 

“Buy from me gold, tried in the fire.”

Me and a friend used to enjoy heading out to the high Sierra mountains. While hiking through the hills, crossing streams and rivers or fishing beside lakes, we would often imagine ourselves in the days of the gold miners. We fantasized about taking a pie tin and stirring it through the sand of the rivers and coming out with huge nuggets of precious gold. We never did find the nuggets, but we might have ruined a few pie tins though.

Is that just a guy Thing?

There are lots of great prepper verses in the Bible: Here’s one I really like

Amos 4:12 “Prepare to meet your God.”

All the guns, gold, grub, Gatorade and gunpowder in your stash will not prepare you to meet the creator of the Heaven and the earth. The above verse was a warning of coming calamity for those who had rejected his repeated warnings. The same message applies to today. Prepare, because you will meet him. Make sure you are standing on the right side.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like…

In the next few weeks I’m going to lay out some of the kingdom parables on this page.

Jesus gave us a very scary warning that was veiled in flowery language. It’s easy to miss the foreboding message if you don’t pay attention.

“Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables.” Mark 4:11

The ones who are ‘without’ are given parables to listen to and try to interpret.

“Them that are without” Don’t be them.

 

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Job was a righteous man and was highly regarded among his family, friends, peers and many in the surrounding villages, towns and cities. He was a man who had very high integrity.

He needed some time to gripe though.

Things went bad real fast for him. He lost property, wealth, friends, employees, businesses, his sons and daughters died and then he came down with an agonizing illness.

Then; to make it all worse, his wife told him to curse God and die and three of his best friends told him he probably had it coming to him.

Job began to gripe.

Why have I even been born? Why is this happening to me? Where is God in this injustice? I wish I could just speak to him face-to-face.

He nearly got that request granted latter on. He shook in fear at nearly seeing God face-to-face

Moses complained too.

When Moses was called by God, he was quietly spending the rest of his life in the stillness and calm of watching and caring for sheep as they grazed. That’s at least how Moses had hoped he would finish out his life.

The Bible tells us he was the meekest man who had ever lived. (That was before Jesus of course.) Obviously he was very humble and didn’t seek great things for himself and had become content with being a shepherd in quiet solitude.

That didn’t match up with the plans of God.

You know most of the story, he was called to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. With God’s help he succeeded, but there came many times in which he was so frustrated with the people he was called to lead that he moaned and complained to God about those people.

Paul complained.

Boy did he complain, but as he struggled with the many groups and people who followed him, just to point out how wrong he was; you start to feel his pain as he can’t quite control himself.

At one point the righteous and beloved Paul the Apostle writes for all the world to read for two thousand years, “I wish they would castrate themselves!”

“Yikes Paul, where’s the love man?”

“Don’t you know the Bible says we should love like Jesus and have his mind in all things and be patient in all situations? Don’t you read…oh wait…you wrote that part of the Bible guided by God’s inspiration. I guess you would know that.”

Paul got very frustrated with those around him.

The most patient man ever got to the point of throwing over tables and taking a whip to people. “Hey where’s the love Jesus?”

So my point is…

Let’s bring it back to Job.

He was so frustrated with his situation and his buddies telling him it was his own fault, he just wanted to scream, or more literally, he wanted to die.

God did a really cool thing.

He began speaking directly to Job; his mighty voice thundering out of the wind storm.

He spoke about and reminded Job of the great glories of the creation and asked Job, “where were you, can you, did you…and more, until Job was speechless and no longer wanted to complain and moan at God for his situation.

As Job went through the painful steps of losing so much, especially his children, he started to turn to God and see that he could have helped him.

God could have yes, but he chose not to. That’s when we start to shake our clay fists at God and complain and that also is when we start to go way off track.

This is a sure truth from scripture: God always has our best interests in mind. If we let him lead he will always lead us to greener pastures, but sometimes he has to take us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Sometimes that valley is very deep and long, but more often it’s short and shallow. We still complain mightily to God though as if we, in our hardened clay condition, we think we deserve to be treated better by the Most High God.

Doesn’t he know who we are?

Good godly righteous men and women have complained over the years and that is normal and very human. We just need to be careful when we get frustrated with the fellow humans around us. We may want to scream, “I wish they would castrate themselves!”

When we bring our complaints to the Most Holy One who inhabits eternity, (I love that title for him.) we need to always respect him and look to him for reasons why the valley is long and the humans around us are really bugging us.

Tell me what you think and go a head and gripe because we all do, just be respectful.

Clay Writer