The Refining Part 4
"Mysteries of the Spirit"
Part A
by Ricci Johnson-Wilson
Opening Prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, I lay before You our time of teaching. As we press into Your Word, I ask that You bring forth the revelation for this hour. I ask that You bring forth the training necessary to prepare us for the days ahead. There is a deep refining taking place in this hour Lord, and for those who submit themselves to that refining, deep revelation will surely be imparted. There is a new anointing that will be imparted because they have allowed You to do the deep refining, Lord, because we have allowed You to refine us. It will be unmatched in the Body of Christ. So, as we study your Word, I ask that You bring forth that which we need. Bring forth an understanding, bring forth revelation, bring forth insight. Bring forth all that Your Word is designed to reveal. Do it Lord, in us.
I thank You Lord, God. I thank You for blessing us with Your Word. I thank You for blessing us with Your Spirit to teach, train, and to prepare us for the call you’ve placed upon our lives. We may fumble along, but Your Spirit is always here to help us through. Develop us into the mature sons of God that You are calling us to be, Lord. In Your precious and holy name, Amen.
[End]
The Refining has begun! The refining process is certainly not easy an easy one. Why is that? What does refining do? It removes impurities to produce a higher quality and/or useable product. We have refining companies all over the world; their goal is to burn or filter impurities and distribute a more desirable product. When we purchase gold and silver, we don’t go and purchase a clump of gold, we purchase gold that’s been refined. Depending on the intended use, greater levels of refining is necessary before it reaches our hands.
Take gold for example: The hotter the fire, the greater the refining process and the purer the product. Gold is heated to nearly 2,000 degrees to remove the impurities. In the skilled hands of a goldsmith, you can have a product so refined that you can take hold of that piece of gold and press your thumbnail into it, creating an indent in the gold. The gold is so refined, with so many impurities removed, that it does not completely harden. With enough strength, we could press deeper into the gold and leave our fingerprint!
I often think, Lord, that is what You are trying to do in each of us. You are trying to refine us. All of Your efforts are intended to remove the impurities from within us so that when You press Your finger against us, we bear Your fingerprint. We become so malleable, that Your mark is left on our lives rather than the marks of man. It is in this malleable condition that we are wholly submitted to Him.
It is a hard process to go through. However, it is in this place where we find ourselves walking through the fire and facing immense difficulties, that we enter into the place of intimacy with our Lord. There is something that occurs through this process, in the midst of fires and in the midst of going through unimaginable difficulties, that can draw us closer to Him than we’ve ever been before. God does not say to us, “I am going to make your life miserable, so I can use you.” Instead, we say, “Use me. Leave Your mark on my life. I lay myself before You to be refined by You.” And when we do this, we have given Him permission to take hold of our lives and work out of us the things that inhibit a pure relationship with Him, those things that prevent Him from pressing into us and leave His mark, His thumbprint, upon our lives. We give Him permission for the process.
The longer we walk with the Lord, the more we learn about the Body of Christ. We’ve learned that there are different levels of Christians. There are those who will get saved and go to church every week and they will grow as much as the message their pastor gives them each week allows. There are those who will add to that some prayer and/or Bible reading almost every day, and they are content to remain at this level. They tend to view Christianity on a more vertical level and most often do not fully understand the extent of relationship God wants with them. I firmly believe that if the children of God knew the depths that Christ went through to bring us, not just to salvation, but into the secret chamber, into a place of intimacy with Him, more would begin to shed off the things of this world to enter that secret place with Him.
Then, there are those who see this horizontal relationship available to them with God. They can see that He actually wants a depth of relationship with them beyond anything they’ve been taught, and they will pursue that relationship with everything they have. They will press into God every day, crying out to Him, “I want more of You, I want to know the deeper things, I want the mysteries of who You are, the revelation of who You are. I want Your fingerprint to rest upon me, Lord!”
Let me share something with you that few realize: Whatever we avail ourselves to, He will strive to honor. God is a gentleman. He will not override our will or our wishes when it comes to relationship with Him.
We have been studying Romans for some time now with the last couple of weeks focused on what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ, an active member. We studied the gifts of God, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the grace that is extended to us to function in that capacity. He will never ask us to do that which He has not given us the grace to accomplish. He is never going to ask someone to be a prophet without giving them the grace to be a prophet. He is never going to ask a teacher to be one, or to go out and teach without giving them the grace to do so.
Grace is what we need to accomplish that which God has called us to accomplish. In Romans chapter 12, Paul is talking about the many members and the different offices that we will fill as the Body of Christ. During this process, we talked about the Spirit of God, and His plans and His purposes, in addition to how He will use us when we submit ourselves to Him.
In 1 Peter 4:10-11, we see how each member will receive gifts to employ in serving one another as good stewards under the manifold grace of God, serving in the strength that God provides. All this is to be done unto the glory of God. Prophets are not to be prophets to gain a profit. Prophets are prophets because they release the word of the Lord. Why? Because they are the mouthpiece of God. Intercessors are the voice of God to the Church. How? Because they seek His face. They spend time in the prayer closet, they spend time shutting out everything else and pressing into God for His will, His plans, His purposes. Their spirit stays in tune to the spirit of God.
In First Corinthians 12, we learn that our gifts are a manifestation of the Spirit of God. The purpose? To unite the Body of Christ into one body. God has us in a place in refinement right now and at the end of this path, He wants a united Body of Christ to come forth. Why is it so important for the Body of Christ to be united? (I am not talking about the unity movement, please let’s just be clear about that.) Because when the Body of Christ functions in unity, they release the fullness of the Spirit of Christ into the earth. The mysteries of Christ are revealed in the earth when the Body of Christ walks in unity.
To be continued next week…
Blessings & Love,
Ricci Johnson-Wilson
