pure

Sometimes I feel so blah when I leave work...
   ...i feel like it's dirtiness just sinks in and just leaves me longing for purity.
Today was one of those days...

As I was driving home, I felt the Lord placing this word in my heart... Pure. What does that mean?  How can I keep my way pure?  ...even in such a filthy world.

"How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word." - Psalm 119:9

I was reminded of the picture of these clear jewels that would make of the City of God in the Kingdom of Heaven.  When I came home I sat down at the piano, and was moved to play the song "Refiner's Fire".  As I played the song I was reminded that purity is not something that we just learn based off of habit or by rules we apply in our lives, but purity only happens when that which is not pure is burned away.  I feel as though purity and holiness lie hand in hand.  The Lord seems to be revealing to me that both happen with the process of sanctification. It is as we grow in the Lord and learn more and more to live by His word, and abide in Christ, and have daily lessons of the cross.  In these experiences, we learn of our failures, of the things we have not yet fully given up to God, we learn of our weakness, and we learn how to piece by piece let God take over all of our lives.  In doing this piece by piece we let the Lord purify us and let the cross deal with that which is not yet pure.  

I know for me... it's so easy to see my failure and right away just long for the complete purity and complete holiness and complete salvation to be a reality in me now.  But diamonds don't just come like pebbles on the beach.  They need intense pressure and heat and time even before they reach the earth's surface in order to become the hard clear gem that the world calls precious.

Yes, we all have days where we feel beaten and bruised from the world, sometimes dragged under... and sometimes just feel like we're not cut out to be a testimony of Christ.  But in these days... if we stop looking at ourselves...and we look to the Lord... and are willing to come to Him with a willing ear ready to learn, and surrender, and lay down who we are before ... no matter our number of failures.  In this He will find a useful vessel... and the struggle will not be in vain.

I found an incredible verse yesterday while reading through Job....
   "He delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and opens their ear by adversity" - Job 36:15    

...in difficult times, where we're faced with the filth of the world, and our own failures, may we learn to look to our Lord, and allow every struggle, every adversity... to open our ears to what He is trying to say to us, and what He is teaching us through it.
...In doing this we will learn the way of purity and holiness.