March 13

Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold. — Job 23:10 BSB

What a purifying effect trials have on us; how they separate the dross from the gold! If a person has a grain of faith in their soul, trials will reveal it. If they possess even the smallest amount of living hope, temptation will bring it to light. If there is love within, trials will extract it. Patience, humility, the fear of God, a desire to be right, a dread of being wrong, honesty, sincerity, integrity—if there is any vital grace of God within the soul, trials will make it manifest, just as the furnace’s heat reveals gold by breaking its bonds with dross. You hardly know whether you are a believer or an unbeliever until you go through trials. You cannot understand what faith is, as a divine gift and spiritual grace, until you have passed through the fire of testing. You do not fully grasp the emptiness of self-reliance or creaturely religion until you have been placed into the furnace of trial.

At times, we may even doubt the truth of the Scriptures, the Deity of Christ, or the efficacy of His atonement, along with other doubts I hesitate to mention lest I unwittingly plant seeds of unbelief in your heart. But when we face such doubts, trials act like a fire, burning up everything that is built on the wisdom or strength of the flesh and bringing us to the point where nothing but what is of God in the soul can survive. If, through these trials, we find that there is something in our hearts that endures, that there is a faith that cannot be burned away, a hope that remains, a love that withstands, a fear of God that prevails, then we can see that there is something pure, like gold in the midst of the dross. We can say, along with Job, “When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”