May 15

Full potential

The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the hearts. Proverbs 17:3 (NKJV)

Heat has the ability to reveal certain things in the natural world. In the case of silver and gold, fire causes all the hidden impurities of the metals to rise to the surface so they can be skimmed off and removed.

Apart from this fiery testing, the impurities would remain. The silver and gold would lack in luster, and they’d be a lot less valuable than their actual potential.

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon makes an interesting comparison to this process. He says that while heat can reveal and remove the impurities and imperfections of silver and gold, God has the power to do something similar. Only He’s not dealing with precious metals but precious people.

What man can do with metals, God can do with people. He can subject the human heart to tests that reveal what’s hidden deep inside of them. And through His process of testing our hearts, certain impurities and imperfections will be brought to the surface.

And it’s at that point we have a choice. We can chafe against the process, fighting it tooth and nail. We can get mad at God for subjecting us to testing and shake our fist at Him. And if that’s what we choose to do, we’ll remain the same and fall short of our spiritual potential.

Or, we can submit to His Spirit and ask Him to supernaturally skim imperfections off the surface, leaving us more pure in heart and more lustrous in character. Because we have hearts that are imperfect and impure, all of us were destined to fall short of who and what we could be. “But the LORD” loves us too much to allow that. He turns up the heat and tests our hearts so we can reach our full potential.

Think About It…
What does this passage reveal to me about God?
What does this passage reveal to me about myself?
Based on this, what changes do I need to make?
What is my prayer for today?

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