The Secret of Buying Gold

“I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich” (Revelation 3:18).

W

hat is this gold that enriches us? It’s the gold of au- thentically- produced godly character; i t ’s

Christlikeness

. We all want to be conformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus, but there is no cheap way to be- come more Christlike. Godly character is not given to us; we buy it. We buy it without earthly money but yet at a steep price.

To de-mystify this thing, let me describe very clearly the pro- cess whereby we buy “gold refined in the fire.” First comes the fire. By fire, I am talking about tribulation or affliction or distress or calamity or persecution. In the last days there is coming a great escalation of fire. You don’t have to wonder or imagine whether you’re in the fire. When the fire hits your life, you will know it! You will lose control, your pain levels will skyrocket, and your desperation for God will intensify. Your flesh will want to collapse and give up, but since your spirit is alive to the beauties of Christ, the fire will be used of God to drive you into the face of Christ like never before. Instead of giving up, you’ll run even harder! Your primary source of sanity in the midst of the fire will be your

The Secret of Buying Gold

secret place, where the Spirit will soothe your tortured soul and the word will sustain your hope and faith.

As you press into the word while in the fire, the word will begin to read your mail. It will locate you. It will draw a plumb line in your life, and you will begin to see areas of your heart and soul that have been out of alignment with God’s ways and will. As you see those things, you are so desperate for God you gladly and diligently do business with Him, repenting and considering deeply how to change and adopt new patterns of thought, behavior, and motive. As you embrace the changes that God’s Spirit inspires within you, you are actually becoming more like Jesus. Or to put it another way, you’re buying gold in the fire.

It says we “buy” this gold because the pricetag is steep. The price is endurance. If we continue to press into God in the secret place—when our legs are crying out that they cannot take another step and when our lungs are screaming at us to relax the pace— then we will buy this gold. We will be changed into the image of Christ in the midst of the fire. We will lose things in the process, but what we gain will be so precious that we will consider all that we lost to be rubbish (Philippians 3:8).

When you’re in the fire, it’s important how you come to the word. Before the fire hit my life, I would come to the word to find good fodder to feed the flock I was pastoring; after the fire hit my life, I came to the word to be fed myself.

James 1:22-25 likens God’s word to a mirror. We are using God’s word properly when we come to it and allow it to mirror back to us the things we need to see and change within ourselves. The word was never intended for us to come to it for a third party. It was written that we might look into it for ourselves, see the standards of Christ reflected back to us, and embrace Spirit- empowered change.

The fire has a way of making you a doer of the word and not just a hearer only. You become desperate for a word from God, and then when it comes, you cling to it like it’s your very life source. When the fire hits your life, your concern is not whether your neighbor is looking into the mirror of the word and then forget- ting about it; your concern is primarily that you look into the word

Secrets of the Secret Place

and not forget. But then something amazing happens. When you share with others how the word mirrored your own shortcomings and how you became a doer of the word in the midst of the fire, your witness will have a profound effect upon your hearers. They will be fed by your witness of what has fed you.

The secret place is the only way you’ll survive the fire. And the secret of the thing is, God’s word flowing into you will not only enable you to survive, it will empower you to overcome and buy eternal treasure. The secret place is God’s ATM, the place where you gain access to the coffers of heaven. God has great understanding into this powerful little secret, which is why He is merciful enough to send the fire in answer to your prayers. If you will cry to Him from the depths of your being, He will send exactly the right kind of fire you need at this moment in your journey. This fire will press you into the mirror of His word that you might begin to buy the gold of “refined character.”

Just your diligence to carefully read this book is doing some- thing within you. You are being filled with hope and energized with fresh purpose. You are gaining renewed impetus to press into God. Your weakened knees and limp hands are gaining strength, and you’re acquiring new momentum in your pursuit of God. You’re getting it. You’re running into the secret place!

Chapter Title

36

---

Дата добавления: 2015-10-23