In Psalm 66:10-12 I read “For you, O God, have
tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we
went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of
abundance.
So abundance in life comes after a long
journey of hard-work, suffering, endurance and you name it. Looking back in time
to ancient Babylon,
to a kingdom that was so unfriendly toward God and His ways. I zoom in on three
young men with backbones of steel, who would not bend, bow or burn. I watch
them as they endure their furnace of affliction. I learned some lessons from
the fiery furnace. If you are going to refuse to let this world squeeze you
into its mold; then you are going to suffer persecution. If you and I are going
to live “godly” then we are going to be persecuted. There will be furnaces of
criticism, furnaces of intimidation, furnaces of hatred, furnaces of
temptation, furnaces of trials like you cannot imagine. That is just the way it
is!
The furnaces of life, especially the
furnaces of persecution are no fun. However, they are all good for us! Why? The furnaces of life exist to help us
become more successful and better human beings. Just as gold is placed in the
furnace and are purified through the process; persecution has the potential to
remove the junk from our lives.
Gold
does not exist in nature in the same form that it is in jewelry that we buy. It
often occurs as grains, flakes, masses or veinlets in rocks. After gold ores
are excavated, they are ground to extract the metal. But the metal, at this
stage, is not yet in its pure form as it still contains a variety of impurities.
To eliminate these impurities, gold should undergo the purification process.
In
the same way, when you make the hard decision to become successful in life, you
must understand that your original ideas and plans on how to become successful
are going to be like the gold ores with all impurities including your mindset,
the society, friends, media, environment etc. To eliminate these impurities, you
will have to undergo the purification process.
While
there are various methods used to purify, I want to focus on the method using
fire. The use of fire or subjecting gold in a heating process requires a crucible,
filter, and burning furnace that can produce a heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.
The gold must be heated until it is smooth before it is transferred onto
another container to cool. After the metal has cooled, the resulting product is
free of any impurities.
Your purification process will
have to do with overcoming an unimaginable amount of difficulties that at first
sight seem insurmountable. You will fall sick, people will think you have gone
nuts, your closest collaborators and friends will abandon you, you will fail
many times over, you will go bankrupt at some point, your spouse might reject
you in fact, once you start on your path to success, the troubles you will find
yourself in will heat you up like gold to temperatures about a thousand degrees.
Never
ever give up even at such times. Have faith in what you are doing as long as
you are convinced it’s the right thing to do. Cool down by celebrating
the little success you register along your way and behold, your purification
process would be just about ending.
For thousands of years the word gold has connoted something of
beauty or value. People like to own it but few ever reflect back on what it
takes to have a piece of gold in your hands. When you become successful, people
see the fame, the money, they never get to imagine what it took to get there.
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