Sometimes you do not know what you have been leaning on until pressure takes it away. Most of us pray the same way when a season gets hard. Take this away. Fix this. Get me through it as fast as You can. That instinct makes sense, nobody asks for pressure on purpose, but there is a different prayer buried underneath the one we usually say, one that does not ask for the pressure to end, but asks God not to waste what it is exposing in us while it lasts.
Malachi describes God this way.
But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.
(Malachi 3:2–3, KJV)
Malachi’s image is not of God standing far off while heat does whatever it wants. He is pictured as a refiner, purposeful, present, and attentive to what is being purified.
That does not mean every hardship was sent by God to teach you a lesson. It means that when pressure exposes something in you, God is able to meet you there and use even that exposure in His work of forming you.
Maybe for you the fire has looked like a season of training that stripped away the confidence you used to lean on. Maybe it looked like pride getting exposed in a moment you did not expect, or self-reliance finally cracking under weight it was never meant to carry. That exposure is uncomfortable. It is also not evidence that God has abandoned you to it. He sits by the fire. He has not walked away simply because the heat rose.
Reflect
What is this season exposing in you that may need God’s refining rather than your hiding?
Prayer
Refining God, I usually ask You to take the pressure away, and sometimes You will. But today I am asking something different. Do not waste what this season is exposing in me. Show me the pride, the self-reliance, the fear I have been leaning on instead of You. Thank You for sitting present at the fire instead of standing distant from it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Before You Go
Name one thing this season has exposed in you. Ask God to refine it instead of asking Him only to end the season.