Desiring The Refiner's Fire

For the next two days I want to quote from the book “Streams In The Desert” by Mrs. Charles Cowman. I’m not trying to flake out on you here, but her writing and understanding of these scriptures is so accurate that I could not say it any better. Much of what she says in this first post is what I continue to hear from the spirit as I listen in Prayer. Enjoy!

“And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mt. Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush… saying… I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.” Acts 7:30,32,34

God is never in a hurry but spends years with those he expects to greatly use. He never thinks the days of preparation too long or too dull.

The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary way through long monotonous years, and day after day returns with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its strength, and without the grace of God is sure to sink into the very sullenness of despair.

Joseph’s was a long trial, and God often has to burn his lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain. “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,” but He knows how long, and like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the moment He sees his image in the glowing metal. We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne, calmly waiting the hour when, with adoring rapture, we shall say, “All things have worked together for good.”

Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance. There is a need-be for every lesson, and when we are ready, our deliverance shall surely come, and we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the very things that were taught to us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service and nobler blessing; and if we have the qualities that fit us for the throne, nothing can keep us from it when God’s time has come. Give God time to speak to you and reveal His will. He is never too late; learn to wait.