Welcome, Friends
Thank you for joining me today on my Journey of Spiritual Growth.
When the Holy Spirit opens my eyes, I get overjoyed as today is a new day
to change the way I look at life and make that small change in my life for
the better.
As I learn, grow, and mature in the Lord, may you find inspiration as well.
Our walk with God is a journey, a development journey. The more time we invest in
the Lord, the more we understand who He is and the more we grow and mature in knowledge.
As we mature, the more our worldly desires start to diminish.
Thinking back on my life,
My worldly desires were not diminishing in my life, I was still living the same ole same ole
lifestyle. From time to time, I did have periods of a little growth but nothing of a steady upward growth.
The Fire Purification
I was sort of familiar with this phrase but it wasn’t until I started my everyday bible study that I really comprehended it.
What is this and why is it an important part of my journey.
My walk with the Lord was basically on Sundays for an hour then I lived my own life
without Him the rest of week. How can I grow and spiritually mature with just an hour relationship
one day a week with the Lord?
You can’t have a good relationship with anyone unless you put time into in.
Relationships are built on time and being in each other’s lives.
Time that I was not willing to invest in the Lord.
Time that I would rather invest in myself
It wasn’t until I read though the whole bible and then started into a deeper study that my relationship with God
really started to develop. It was that deep personal time with the Lord that He longed to have with me is when my life started to change,
and I started to feel a new sense of differentness over me.
My heart started to change, my actions started to change, then my desires started to change.
That same process as the Grinch had when his heart grew three sizes larger.
As followers of the Lord,
There will be times in our spiritual journey when He places us in a fire to purify us.
Scripture talks about the refining process of gold. When gold is heated to high temperatures in a furnace, it melts,
and the impurities rise to the surface. By removing these impurities, what remains is pure gold.
God also refines us.
His refining process is different for each individual and situation. Lasting for different
lengths of time as it depends on God’s purpose and our obedience to Him.
Sometimes, the refining might be brief, focusing on a specific area that needs changed.
Other times, it can be a prolonged period, involving deeper transformation and growth.
This refining process is not to harm us but to surface those impurities and remove them.
I spent a good year in that fire of purification, that awful storm. A prolong period of deep transformation and growth.
When we resist Him
Don’t listen to Him
Ignore Him
This refining process takes longer.
What I would like to share with you today is what I have been learning
and experiencing in my own life.
As we grow and mature, it is important to learn how to recognize this refining processes
allowed by God.
Sometimes they can be a daily occurrence or prolonged, and some believers just shrug them off
as they don’t know about or understand.
just as I have been doing my whole life
I have learned that the more time I am willing to put in my relationship with the Lord,
the more I am able to hear His voice.
God talks to us all the time, we just haven’t figured out how to hear Him.
Your never going to hear from Him unless you believe you can.
When we talk to God, it is called prayer
When God talks to us, its called being psychotic
Just wanted to throw a little humor in
Now that my life has went through that deep transformation period of changing myself
I am now more able recognize these daily occurrences of Him purifying me.
sometimes it is instant and sometimes it might take a day or two to understand as I wasn’t paying attention,
ignoring it, brushing it aside and even missing it all together.
God is bringing my impurities to the surface for me to see so I can change my habits
and replace them with habits that align with His will.
Hopefully I won’t have to go through those prolonged storms anymore as I am getter
at recognizing my sins and correcting my behavior. The quicker I realize the fire purification, the quicker I can get out of that season.
All these years, I have been totally ignoring God and the fires of refining, I had no idea what is was.
Now it makes sense why my worldly desires were not diminishing in my life.
How is God refine me?
He has been putting me into situations that once caused me to huff as I was being impatient.
Now I just shake my head and say “nope, it doesn’t bother me”
You want to talk drama? Heck yeah, let me get some coffee brewing
and tell me!
Just today, while checking out, the cashier did something gross.
Normally I would tell others it, gossip about it and laugh.
yesterday in the mail, I got a local magazine, and it honors a member
in my town, I was shocked by the personal information she choose
to have written about her. My thoughts wanted to go to that negative place
Now I try and choose to not to engage it.
The past few days I have been dealing with past issues that have resurfaced
and I have really been really challenged by this. Turn up the fire Lord !!
Who gets the glory? You or the enemy?
God gave me a new heart for a reason, I made the personally choice that my life no longer
belongs to me but to Him. I am not going to let satan have the victory
yes unfortunately he did get a little bit of the victory.
I am thankful for God’s mercy to allow me to go through this situation again and again
practice makes perfect,
God is going to allow things to keep happening in my life to keep refining me.
I need to keep making the choice to honor him
I invite you to join me today in becoming more aware of the situations around us.
God allows these moments to awaken us, reminding us not to ignore Him.
This refining process is not meant to harm us, but to bring these impurities to the surface,
helping us recognize them to change our minds so we can change our ways.
What is your weakness that God is helping you work through?
Whatever your weakness may be, I encourage you to start paying attention to these moments.
If they don’t align with God’s will,
Let’s stand together as we can work on becoming better versions of ourselves.
Let’s learn to listen to God’s voice and the voice of the Holy Spirit
Heaven Father,
I come before you today with joy in my heart that you are the Lord over my life.
You gave Your one and only son to die on the cross for me so I could have
eternal life. I don’t just want to know this, but I want to experience it
though a real relationship with You. I want to learn to hear Your voice.
I desire to be better.
Bring my impurities to the surface, these undesirable habits and
me to realize my need to change.
I want to make better choices that honor You instead
of giving the enemy, the victory.
I put my faith, hope and trust in You
In Jesus’s name I pray
Amen
Join me today as we change ourselves first so we can help change the world around us
https://echosofmyfootsteps.com
Interactive Lesson # 15 Refine Me
