God's Cardiac Unit - Heart Test That Matters Most

Proverbs 17:3
(NKJV) The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the
LORD tests the hearts.

We don’t like it, but experience validates that it is true: it’s in the furnaces of life that we are
tested. We all want to be that finished museum piece, beautiful to
behold, gleaming, admired - just needing a little dusting now and then.
Not going to happen. We were created “living” beings.

Scripture reminds us that God gives tests – not so that he can know something new
or discover anything – testing is for our benefit. What’s really going
on inside you – the you nobody sees. Does our repentance hug rejoicing
in who God is?

The nation of Israel is our example. God went ahead of them in the Promised Land and when they trusted in Him, and not
their own ability, they won battles. There was joy. Dancing. Life was
good. They conquered the land.

But after Joshua dies, and that generation passed without doing what God had ordained (teaching the
God-principle to their children – that the Joy of the Lord is our
strength). That the new generation who did not know God, became the
conquered instead of the conquerors. Some of the enemies of truth and
righteousness had been left in the land to “test…whether they would obey
the Lord’s commands…” They didn’t.

And we (at least, I know I am) are like them. Silver and gold are purified by heat – the dross is
burned off and the metal emerges cleaned of the stuff that mars its
beauty and usefulness. To mix metaphors here, given the test, the
furnace of affliction, I found that “I studied the wrong material and
was not prepared,” instead of being the metal and letting the fire clean
it – and learn from that – I wanted to manage the test.

God wants us to learn that JOY finds its source in Him. Not ourselves. Not
our idols. Not our abilities. And he tests. And tests. And tests, until
we learn it’s all about Him and not us.

Are you in the furnace? Are your eyes fixed on the test or the One, who with your repentance, rejoices
with you when the fire has done its work?


Copyright © 2010 by P. Griffith Lindell