Refining Fire 1 Peter 1:1-12

Have you noticed the cost of gold lately? It is at about $1500 an ounce. Not bad. I went to a gold party recently and brought some gold chains and old rings that I had. It didn’t have much because most of my jewelry has a sentimental value to me, but I still made a couple hundred dollars.

A few of the items I brought I wasn’t sure were real gold and others I wasn’t sure the quality of the gold. The jeweler was able to tell me exactly what it was though. He knew immediately what I brought and told me its value.

Our scripture passage today says, “Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it's your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. “

The pure jewelry I brought survived the jewelers test. Our faith is tested daily. At some point we will all probably experience deep suffering. Times of hardship and suffering cause us to take a deep look at our faith and evaluate if God is who He says He is. We find out if we believe in God because he is God or because we want an easy life?

1 Peter says that our faith will be displayed as evidence of his victory. God knows our suffering will stretch us, but He wants us to trust the Holy Spirit to refine our faith so that when the day of testing comes we will survive the fire.

Read today's passage at Biblegateway 1 Peter 1:1-12