This is an appropriate thought to remind myself of today. We heard this morning that my 16 year old nephew has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It’s hit us all hard, but he lead the way with an attitude of “it doesn’t really matter what the diagnosis is, it won’t change what God is doing”. He is an inspiration to us. Thank you for your continued love, prayer and support. God is good.
I don’t know if this analogy is true. I’ve been a little tentative to ask anyone who might know, because if it’s not true I know I’ll still use it in sermons and that wouldn’t be the most enduring thing for people seeking truth.
I resent it when people talk, or act, as if God is this great experimenter, toying with our emotions in a cosmic test tube to prove a hypothesis he has about the human race, or us individually as part of the human race.
As if God doesn’t know how we’ll respond to a given set of stimuli. If he knows the number of hairs on our heads, he knows how we’ll respond when we’re told we have cancer. He doesn’t need to let us go through cancer in order to confirm his hunch.
God created time and is outside time, so any that hold to this increasingly popular idea that maybe God can be surprised; let me give you two thoughts.
- Take the Bible as it is meant to be taken. When God sarcastically says “I’m surprised at the wickedness of Israel,” please understand God invented sarcasm and used sarcasm and one book I intend to write in the future will examine this in detail because too many people don’t get that God likes sarcasm… but I digress.
- We are bound by time and can’t grasp anything outside of time with any coherency. If God sees everything in the present tense, it makes sense of some theological conundrums I don’t have time to go into right now.
Suffice it to say, the meaning behind Malachi 3:3 (if the analogy I am eventually getting to is true) is more profound than thinking God may not know what he’s doing.
When a silversmith, smiths silver he holds the silver in the hottest part of the flame. He won’t take it out of the flame too early. 
He won’t take it out of the flame too late. He watches it closely – very closely. He watches it closely because there is a moment when he knows the impurity has been separated and the dross has been cleared… it is the moment – when he is closely watching the silver in the flame – that he sees his own reflection.
God keeps you in the hottest part of the flame because he sees the good in you that he needs to refine. He won’t take you out a moment too soon. He won’t take you out a moment too late. He’s going to see you reflect his face.
I can illustrate this a hundred ways, remembering our time in New Zealand. I have no regrets going or the way we went, or the way we returned. God saw something in us that needed to show his image more.
He sees something similar in you.
