refined telent

I used to not be a big fan of gold. I always had a lot of friends who like it, but not I. And even now, I'm not a fan of shiny gold; I like the antique finished stuff. I know this is boring for guys, but all that to say growing up this idea didn't have much meaning to me because I didn't care about gold.
When I was younger and in church, I heard many teaching on gold. And how like gold ,GOD wants to refine us. And he does so through various methods, one being trials (1 Peter). But unfortunately it didn’t mean much to me when someone said that GOD is refining us like gold because gold held no value for me.

But the process is amazing, and it is another example of how GOD made the physical world to mirror the spiritual. Gold refining for dummies goes as follows. . . there is something that has gold in it but it isn't pure, so they heat up this rock or ore or whatever. And as they keep heating it the gold separates from the rest of the worthless material. The hotter the fire, the more pure and refined the gold.

Isn't that amazing because that is what GOD does for us. All of us can relate to that. We are going through something that is rough, I mean so rough we think we're gonna vomit from the pain and our heart is literally gonna implode. But after, when GOD has gotten us through it, our faith is stronger. And the only way we can truly learn to trust GOD is this process. Going through the hard times and allowing Him to get us through it.

It's like a muscle. The only way to grow a muscle is to stretch it beyond what it was made to do before. And the more weight and repetition added, the stronger the muscle.

So these two ideas go hand in hand. GOD uses the trials of our lives, whether it be a break-up, family problems, loneliness, school, car troubles, or just plain mean people. We have seen GOD use these things time and time again to refine our character and faith as gold.
Tuesday during a conversation with a very wise friend, she said something that stuck out to me and made me ponder. She said that people have unrefined talent and gifts. For example, I have a friend who is an amazing teacher and when I told him that, he said it’s just practice. The older he gets, the more he teaches and the more he learns different tips on teaching the better he gets. His gift and talent is refined.
This also made me think back to when I was younger in GOD. I still had the same gifts as I do now, but I was so immature in them that I didn’t know what to do with them. And since our greatest gifts are also our greatest challenges in our life, I would often, and still do sometimes, hurt people. For example, my bluntness in communicating truth. There have been so many times when I am talking to someone I love and they ask my opinion, but they don’t want to hear it. Instead they would rather me tell them what they want to hear, but because I love them, I’m gonna tell them the truth in love. (I know this isn’t a gift unique to me but very common). But it is a gift nonetheless. A gift that I pray I always use with wisdom because let’s face it; sometimes people aren’t ready for the truth.

But years ago I went around hurting people needlessly. In my immaturity and unrefined gift I didn’t know how to handle things with wisdom. I think of this girl I waited tables with at Waffle House. She wasn’t the hardest of workers. In fact she didn’t really work hard at all. So I and the other ladies had to pick up the slack. It didn’t take much for anyone to see this. But instead of going to GOD for this girl, I just went off on her. My big ole log in my eye wacked her in the face while I was trying to get her speck out. But over the years GOD has, and still is, teaching me to “Go to GOD for my neighbor before I go to my neighbor for GOD”.

He has been refining my gift.

I can say the same for the other gifts he’s given me: my voice, my love of and heart for children, my teaching, my artistic gift. He is refining it.

What gifts and talents do you have that He is trying to refine? This again is a hard question because if you are anything like me, you see a gift and are so anxious to use it because you don’t want it to be wasted, that you cause harm. Instead we must nurture our gifts and let our Father refine them.