Dear Ones,
Hope you wake to see how things in your past can work out for your good. I plan to clean the apartment today and do food prep and go for another beautiful walk on the trail. Let us not forget to pray for all those suffering in the south and give as we are able for the needs are many.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
If we had a choice, would we choose an easy life without pain and suffering and plenty of life’s goods? Most of us would say yes but the Lord loves us and refines us, so instead He may send us afflictions. As it says in Isaiah 48:10, “I’ve refined you, but not without fire. I’ve tested you like silver in the furnace of affliction.”  Farther in the chapter it says, “I am God, your God, who teaches you how to live right and well. I show you what to do, where to go.”

Mark Roberts writes on Crosswalk.com about the furnace of adversity. It doesn’t sound like something we would jump up and down and say, “Bring it on!“ Many of us avoid whatever is painful and want to get out of suffering as quickly as possible. But when life is painless and rather easy, we can get focused on such trivial things, our looks, our possessions, the latest things and miss what is important. So, God may use fire to refine us and help us get rid of the dross and see what is truly meaningful.

God often uses the avenue of pain in our lives to bring us good and to cause us to be brought closer to Him. If we think back on our own lives, we may have wondered at the time where God was when we suffered from covid or cancer etc. But suffering helps us to see what is most important and we discover that the things we were worried about before seems trivial in comparison now. The Lord doesn’t have us go through the furnace to destroy us but rather to refine us and purify us and help us become more like Him. We also experience God in deeper ways and I believe it also helps us to relate with empathy to others who are suffering. When I have pain, I am reminded to pray often during the day for a friend who lives in pain every day and to lift her before the Lord.

Let us patiently accept our times in the furnace and reap the blessings God has for us.

Challenge for today: When going through times of affliction, ask the Lord what He desires for you to learn from it and then thank Him that He will walk with you all the way!
Blessings on your weekend and prayers and love, Judy