It Starts Small

Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24

I love this scripture and it’s apart of my morning prayers. I love that I serve a God that I can trust to say, search me. Show me my unrighteousness and fix me. Yesterday I shared a snip of him showing me that I still have a long road of reprogramming and transforming. But it’s incredibly encouraging that through conflict, this is exactly what we need to make those transformations.

Conflict shows us who we really are. Most of the conflict in our lives are not so much about the subject as it is The Who: myself and God.

And patience, experience; and experience, hope: Romans 5:4

The word translated experience is interesting. It means character. It’s a term used in metal refinement. A silversmith or goldsmith will heat the material until all the impure materials rise to the top. He skims them off and repeats the process several times until there are no more impurities and he knows he has a pure material when he can see his reflection in it.

God puts me into the fire of affliction to test me. He’s working to bring impurities to the surface so he can skim them off the top. We grow when there is conflict, pressure, sorrows and trouble when we understand that it is meant to build our character. God doesn’t remove us from difficulties or pain because he uses it to transform us. God transforms troubles into strength and character.

And patience, experience; and experience, hope: Romans 5:4

God builds our character to be more like him. As he refines us through the fire, he’s goal is for our reflection to become his. As the master of refinement, he’s working so our lives and character reflect his perfect reflection. His character in us gives us hope.

The word hope here is translated confidence. Hope comes from a rock solid faith in God. Hope is the anchor of the soul.

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Hebrews 6:19

Hope is confidence!

Hope is faith in the future tense. It believes God in the present and believes God I; the future.

And hope make things not ashamed; because the love of God is is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Romans 5:5

God is never going to disappoint us. God cannot fail and he will never fail.

I started to look at my old list that I had made of all the hurts, pains, conflicts. I started to look beyond that list for the what was not obvious. Instead of focusing on the situation or what people had done, I looked at two things: who was I at the time, and Where was God. The later question was easy to answer….he was silently looking on. I began to look at my own failures in each situation. I could see that I could have made better decisions and had a better way of looking and doing.

Fear, doubt, disappointment, etc. in all these situations, looking beyond the events, Gods was there trying to transform my character.

This brought us back to the same question….what is faith, then? How do I sum up what faith is?