By using fire, gold and silver is tested to determine the purity of the metal.  It is heated to the point of melting.  If there are any impurities, they will rise to the surface of the metal.  The impurities are then scraped away and discarded. This process may be repeated several times to get the metal to as pure a state as possible.

In our verse for today, we are told that the Lord tests the heart.  Within each of our hearts are impurities that God wants to remove from us.  His desire is to get our heart to be as pure as possible.  Purity in this case means holiness; or the absence of sin.  It is God’s desire that we allow Him to purify our hearts to the point that there is no sin found there.  This is a lifelong process because we are in a fallen world and we all have a sin nature that will not die until our flesh dies.

The Lord tests our heart by allowing circumstances and situations to come into our lives that reveal the impurities in our lives – these can be negative or positive things.  I have often remarked half kidding that this is the reason that God allows teenagers to live with us.  If anything can test what is in our heart it is the natural instincts of a teenager.

But all they or any other circumstance is revealing is the sin that already exists in your heart.  And once that sin or impurity is revealed God expects us to come to Him and ask Him to help us get rid of it.  Usually we blame our circumstances for the way we feel and/or react.  Your behavior is a choice that you have made in response to the circumstance.

Every action, thought, behavior, attitude, or feeling that you experience is a programmed response to circumstances or situations in your life.  Your whole life goes into creating the way you respond to things.  God, through the testing process, wants to reprogram you to respond as Jesus would respond.  God will turn up the heat and an impurity will rise to the surface.  This will be a wrong action, thought, behavior, attitude, or feeling.  God wants you to allow Him to take the impurities out of your life.  But we often don’t do that; instead we will push that impurity back down into our lives, trying to ignore it, or by justifying it.  God will then have to turn up the heat again to bring that impurity back up again.  And He is patient; He will keep doing it until you allow Him to cleanse you of it.

Every time that we allow God to scoop some of the impurities from our lives, we become purer; more holy.  That is God’s goal; to make us holy as He is holy.  We must allow Him to do that and we need to understand that He will not stop testing us until He has achieved His goal; our holiness.  Jesus, help us to stand in the heat of your testing and be willing to be cleansed of anything that is not of you.

Read: 1 Kings 9:1-10:29; Acts 8:14-40; Psalm 130:1-8; Proverbs 17:2-3