Tested By Fire: Season of Refining 🔥

“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 launderers’ soap.
He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;
He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.“

Malachi 3:2-3 (New King James Version)

I remember the first time I prayed for the Lord to put me through the refiner’s fire. I wanted to come out pure like gold. I no longer wanted to be gold-plated, with the semblance of godliness, but I wanted to embody who He was completely. I wanted to live out His standard of holiness because I had seen the depth of the deception I had found myself in. Not only did witchcraft confuse my mind so much that it led me to battle with a fragmented sense of self, and with such a depth of brokenness, my mind broke too under all that weight, and I experienced psychosis not once, but twice.

The witchcraft I did was my spirituality, and every time I got the Tower card in Tarot, I would see it as yet another test the Universe wanted to put me through. What I didn’t see was that the Kingdom of Darkness had blinded me so much that the inner divinity I found in myself was only gold-plated. Even if poop is dressed up in gold, it doesn’t mean that poop is now holy. True divinity is only found in the person of Jesus Christ. And when we lay down our lives to follow Him, He changes our nature to be a new creature that can actually hold the Weight of His Glory, true spiritual gold.

“Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?‘ They answered and said to the king, ‘True, O king.’ ‘Look!’ he answered, ‘I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. Then Nebuchadnezzar went near the mouth of the burning fiery furnace and spoke, saying, ‘Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here.‘ Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego came from the midst of the fire.

Daniel 3:24-26 (New King James Version)