Self control week3

 But he knows the way that I take; 

when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.

Job 23:10

Holiness is the only soil in which a relationship with Christ can be rooted. But how do we strive for holiness? Do we simply decide to be holy and then try to be good enough to be welcomed into God's circle of friends?

Job says that God has ‘tested' us so that we can ‘come forth as gold.’ Trials do indeed refine us as if in a fire. One can imagine a clump of gold ore protesting in the foundry. The metallurgist would seem cruel as he heated the gold almost beyond endurance. But as the gold is smelted in the heat and the flame, it is purified into real, true metal without any flaws. 

Yet who is so mature that he or she welcomes the refining fire? Almost no one. The discipline of God hurts. Hebrews reminds us that God's discipline is on our behalf. ‘God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful, Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it' (Hebrews 12.10-11).

Almost every time we meet a great believer whose life has been schooled in holiness, that believer has passed through the furnaces of God. Those souls have wept, and their tears have purified their world views, their value systems and their hearts. Then, tried and cleansed, they have moved freely into a relationship with Christ that is more powerful than it was before their trials. They are at home in the presence and fellowship of God, for they are heirs with Christ, more like him than they could ever have dreamed possible.