Another way God uses suffering is to refine and purify his people. The messenger who came to prepare the way of the Lord (Malachi 3:1-4) was sent ‘to purify the Levites’ until they should present ‘offerings in righteousness…..acceptable to the Lord.’ God still refines his people to fit them for purer service. Sometimes he uses suffering as his messenger.
How often we serve God in our own strength, bringing him our own puny offerings! He wants to prepare us for truer service and higher offerings. He allows suffering to come into our lives. ‘I will bring them into the fire; I will refine them like silver,’ he says, ‘and test them like gold (Zech.13:9). So he purifies the relationship between himself and his people until he is able to say, ‘They will call upon my name, and I will answer them; I will say “They are my people,” and they will say, “The Lord is our God.”’
Gold and silver are precious metals. We refine them to make them more suited to the needs for which we wish to use them. Only refined gold is useful gold. God refines his people for the same reason. But how does suffering refine God’s children?
Suffering purifies. When we are in pain, we are willing to let go of all that cannot stand the fiery test. We come to see ourselves for what we are – helpless, hurting, weakened by sin. We cry to God for wholeness, and this is the first step towards holiness.
Suffering clarifies our sense of values. It forces us to choose between reality and illusion, between what we are and what we think we are, between what we need and what we think we need; it crystallizes our faith. We learn what we really believe and why; we let go of our own pet notions and throw ourselves upon God’s truth.
Suffering may be a means of growth. It hurls us utterly upon God and teaches us to trust him. In the crucible of suffering we learn our true identity. We are enabled to look up into God’s face and to say with certainty and finality, ‘The Lord is my God’ – and to mean it. The Lord Jesus was himself refined – made perfect – through sufferings. Shall we wonder, then, if suffering is part of our lives? How else could we become like our suffering Lord?
With us in the refiner’s fire, as with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Chaldean furnace, walks the Son of God. In fellowship with him, we shall find that the fire has no power against us; not even the smell of smoke will linger about us (Dan.3:27).
God himself entered our suffering in the person of his suffering Son, thereby sanctifying forever all human pain. Before the throne today Jesus wears our human body, the marks of suffering still visible upon it. There he intercedes for us continually, sending his grace to enable us to triumph in our pain. It is no stranger who holds the crucible of our suffering, but our own beloved Lord. ‘See, I have refined you, though not as silver,’ he whispers to us; ‘I have tested you in the furnace of affliction’ (Isaiah 48:10). One day we shall appear before him pure and holy, perfectly fitted to serve him throughout eternity.
(Margaret Clarkson, Destined for Glory. p.84f.)
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