Joel M Bradshaw

3The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold,
and the LORD tests hearts.–Proverbs 17

It’s been years since I have taken a chemistry class, and so I brushed up with a little online research regarding crucibles this morning. Crucibles were a way for metals to be purified. Say an ancient culture mined gold or silver. They would then heat the metal in the crucible or furnace and whatever impurities or dross existed in the metal would float to the surface. The metal workers could then scrape away the dross and be left with a more pure metal.

What does it mean for the Lord to test your heart? I can think of two options.

1. God doesn’t know how your heart will respond and so must test you. The test is really for him.
2. God knows how you will respond and therefore has chosen to refine your inner person through hardship. The test is really for you.

Only option two fits the context of the proverb. A person might ask why they are going through a difficult circumstance or season. Why are they facing this profound burden or immense difficulty? The sovereign God is at work and so pay attention. What impurities are being revealed? What selfishness is floating to the surface?

The entire book of Job is about a person who suffered (from his perspective) unjustly. And yet, at the end of the story, Job humbly repents. And yet the Bible tells us that none was as righteous as Job. This only makes sense if God was at work refining Job’s heart. By the end of the story, dross in Job’s heart had been revealed and was scraped away. It’s as if Job didn’t just get his family back, but at the end of the story got God back.

I look back at my life with this perspective. God has used times of suffering and loss to reveal my hypocrisies and selfishness. Times when I depended more upon myself than upon God. My addictions to idols in my heart. All have been like dross that floated through the surface and needed to be scraped away. Times when I needed to truly repent of my sins and turn back to Jesus. God sovereignly has used the suffering in my life to refine me. Though the sufferings have themselves not been good, God used them in a good way and for a good purpose. Therefore, I am grateful for the crucible. Ponder your heart and your seasons. How might the sovereign God be at work. What is being revealed in your heart?–JMB