Do you want God\u2019s refining? Or would you rather just clean yourself up?<\/p>\n
In Malachi 3, God speaks of the \u201cmessenger of the covenant\u201d, the coming Messiah:<\/p>\n
But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. (Malachi 3:2-3)<\/p>\n
Fire burns. It hurts. It may seem to be destroying. But the fire wielded by God for His purposes in His people cleanses and transforms, so that they might become what He intends them to be: those who offer themselves back to Him, those who delight in Him, those who display His glory to all of creation.<\/p>\n
C.S. Lewis gives a marvelous picture of this refining process in the third book of the Narnian Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. <\/em>The central character is \u201ca boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.\u201d He is transported magically to the land of Narnia together with his cousins, Lucy and Edmund. There they join Prince Caspian on a journey by ship to the End of the World.<\/p>\n After a storm leaves the ship battered and broken, the travelers drop anchor near a mountainous island. To avoid having to work, Eustace escapes inland, climbing over a ridge. He gets lost in the fog, however, and then, as the fog turns to rain, has to take refuge in a cave. \u00a0There he finds jewels and treasure of untold value \u2013 the hoard of a deceased dragon. He puts a particularly precious bracelet on his arm, and goes to sleep, imagining all the power he will have with this wealth. When he awakes, however, something has happened: \u201cSleeping on a dragon\u2019s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.\u201d<\/p>\n It takes Aslan, the Great Lion, the Son of the Emperor over the Sea, to change him back into a boy. Here is how Eustace tells the story to Edmund:<\/p>\n I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me.\u00a0. . . It came nearer and nearer.\u00a0 I was terribly afraid of it.\u00a0 You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough.\u00a0 But it wasn’t that kind of fear.\u00a0 I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it<\/em> \u2013 if you can understand. Well, it came closer up to me and looked straight into my eyes.\u00a0 And I shut my eyes tight.\u00a0 But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it. . . . I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells \u2013 like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it.\u00a0 The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg [where the bracelet was now squeezing his transformed arm].\u00a0 But the lion told me I must undress first. . . .<\/p>\n I was just going to say that I couldn\u2019t undress because I hadn\u2019t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. . . . So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place.\u00a0 And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana.\u00a0 In a minute or two I just stepped out of it.\u00a0 I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty.\u00a0 It was a most lovely feeling.\u00a0 So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.<\/p>\n \u201dBut just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before.\u00a0 Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too.\u00a0 So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.<\/p>\n Well, exactly the same thing happened again.\u00a0 And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off?\u00a0 For I was longing to bathe my leg.\u00a0 So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it.\u00a0 But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.<\/p>\n \u201dThen the lion said. . . You will have to let me undress you.\u00a0 I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now.\u00a0 So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.<\/p>\n \u201dThe very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.\u00a0 And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt.\u00a0 The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cWell, he peeled the beastly stuff right off \u2013 just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt \u2013 and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.\u00a0 Then he caught hold of me \u2013 I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on- and threw me into the water.\u00a0 It smarted like anything but only for a moment.\u00a0 After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm.\u00a0 And then I saw why.\u00a0 I’d turn into a boy again.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n Neither [Edmund nor Eustace] said anything for a while. The last bright star had vanished and though they could not see the sunrise because of the mountains on their right they knew it was going on because the sky above them and the bay before them turned the colour of roses.<\/p>\n [C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the \u201cDawn Treader\u201d<\/em> (Collier Books, 1952), 88-92.]<\/p>\n This is not the end of Eustace\u2019s problems. He still may have dragonish thoughts at times. He may still appear hard and knobbly. There will be more refining. But the decisive moment has come. He is no longer a dragon. The skin is gone. Aslan has transformed him.<\/p>\n This is what Paul commands in Ephesians:<\/p>\n Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God \u2013 truly righteous and holy. (Ephesians 4:21-24 NLT)<\/p>\n Where are you in this process? Have you been trying to clean yourself, peeling off layers of ugly behavior, correcting faults, disciplining yourself \u2013 but not dealing with the fundamental issue of a wayward heart? Do you fundamentally love the world rather than God? Have Christ\u2019s claws never ripped deep into you, making that fundamental change? Then turn to Him. Repent. And be made new.<\/p>\n Or has the fundamental change taken place in your life \u2013 you are no longer a dragon! \u2013 but lately have you been breathing fire and acting dragonish once again? This is the situation Paul addresses in Ephesians 4. Put off that old man! Put on the new man! Become what you are! This, too, is a refining; this, too, is painful; this, too, requires some ripping away by our Lord and by His Spirit.<\/p>\n So don\u2019t settle for some version of a self-help gospel. God created you to display what He is like, as a purified priest. Be purified \u2013 whatever the cost.<\/p>\n
\n\u201dAt last we came to the top of a mountain. . . . There was a garden \u2013 trees and fruit and everything.\u00a0 In the middle of it there was a well.<\/p>\n