refining….

so, as a christian, i’ve heard a lot in my life about ‘refining’.. being in the ‘refiner’s fire’… God is ‘refining’ you that you would become something new…. no lie, as i have been thinking about this word this week, i looked it up and here’s what i saw:

‘To purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or excellent; to polish; as, to refine the manners, the language, the style, the taste, the intellect, or the moral feelings.’

seriously. what’s so amazing about this? i’ll tell you.

in my life, i’ve been at a fork in the road for a while. not really knowing, or maybe even believing, that God had something so much bigger than i could dream up. as i was talking to some friends this week during their drama of starting another semester, i gave them the saying ‘we only see through the knot hole, and God sees over the fence.'(redneck, i know, but so true) … and then i hit me- i’ve been choosing all this time to only see through the hole. did you catch that CHOOSING… it took a long discussion with my husband and some serious digging to realize that I am what’s holding ME back from BELIEVING that God CAN do ‘exceeding [and] abundantly above all that [I] ask or think, according to the power that works in [me]’… eph 3:20

the ‘ah-ha!’ moment was this past sunday when our pastor taught on that very verse in ephesians 3.  i have GOT to BELIEVE that HE can do more than what i can see. now let’s not take this out of context- this has nothing to do with records, knowing people, what i have, etc; it has everything to do with the fact that i can’t decided to put God in a box by only believing what i see in the knot hole even though i know that there’s more over the fence.

therefore, i’m being refined- it’s only something God can do. He allows us to search and dig in the middle of a hard ‘season’ until we have the ‘ah-ha!’ moment that puts all the puzzle pieces together. he’s ‘…purify[ing] from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or excellent; to polish; as, to refine the manners, the language, the style, the taste, the intellect, or the moral feelings’…  He’s allowing me to be polished and become more mature to believe in what’s over the fence… no just what i see through the hole.

so be encouraged this week- there’s more… search and dig… ephesians 3 is a great place to start.

i have no idea who this little girl is, but what a way to remember what the God we serve can really do!!

“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,” Ephesians 3:20

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H2H4s-Tr74&feature=search]