“Increase comes through hot, hard places.”
Loren Thornburg
Heat can be dangerous and yet when applied and used well it can greatly increase the value of something and someone. Silver is one of those things. There are various methods by which you can attain pure silver. These combine heat in a special furnace and other elements to refine and purify silver scrap into something of great worth and value. Without this process it would remain scrap, missing the beauty of what it could be. Our lives are much the same. It is those hard places that purify us into something greater, into someone with even more to offer. There are different methods of this process, different ways of getting there, and it is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. But, the results remain the same...beautiful. Although there is beauty and usefulness in scraps, in who we are and who we were before the fire, it is the fire that brings increase and helps us to more. Why remain scrap when you can be silver?
“And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined and will test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will hear and answer them…”
Zechariah 13:9 AMP
A remnant would be saved. God is in the business of saving His people. The hard part though is the hard parts. His saving looks much different from what we would expect it to. It looks like refining and it feels like fire. Yet, in the Lord’s hands it is good. He knows what we need more than we do to bring us to great increase. Who better to do that than the One who created us. With Him we are always in a special furnace, a place where we can know that if we let Him, God will use whatever trial we face for our purification. Furthermore, pure means more free for we are no longer weighed down by unnecessary elements. I want to be pure as silver, free as pure, but that takes some fire.
