The Heat

Upon reading from my favorite blog, aholyexperience.com, I am again like I am most days after reading and reflecting on Ann's insight, completely aware that God has used her (a woman whom I have never met) to bring light and encouragement when I most needed it and where I most needed it, in the fiery heat of my life.

Isaiah 48:10
"I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, i have refined you in the furnace."

Oh how life feels like a furnace. The heat presses in as I battle each day with the path God has put our family on. The heat presses hard, I long for an escape, long to be back where I was with those I love in California. Yet, here I am in a state that I have sworn I would never live (Arizona), struggling to understand a new people to relate with, longing for familiar friendships for myself and children and daily wondering how in the world we got here and should we stay?

The heat is pressing and somedays, like yesterday I looked for various ways to escape it. I pondered upon things lost, let the sadness, the fears, the loneliness seep into my heart and mind. Rather than seeing God's refining beauty from the heat, I saw darkness, unknowns, regrets, and a pure ugly mess seeping from my heart. My words of distrust towards God and my husband were harsh, my lack of patience with my children stirred anger, my lack of faith in God
got the best of me and the heat that refines became the heat that destroyed.

I suppose this can happen in the fiery furnace of God's refiners fire. Heat is not enjoyable. And were not for new graces and unconditional love I perhaps would have let the firery heat destroy. Thankfully God uses people like Ann to bring encouragement and hope for those weary of the fire. God is indeed reshaping and molding something new and though He has been given my mess to work with, He promises that it is His love for his children that allows this hard pressing to take place.

Hebrews 12. As a wife, mom and friend, I do pray that my weariness of the heat will not leave me destitute but rather refined. I pray children that the ugliness of my sin will point to God's refining and discipline and ultimately to God's great Grace and Love.

Hebrews 12
"Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you not forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as son?

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. Nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the ones He loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. If is for discipline the you have to endure. God is treating you as sons......

Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight the paths for your feet, that what is lame may be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled."

Everyday the root of bitterness seeps in and everyday I need God's Grace, Love and Discipline to bring me through The Heat.