As I get older, I reminisce about the good old days. I passed by a blacksmith trailer the other day and was reminded of what it was like in my blacksmith shop.  Off in the corner of the trailer was a pile of old shoes. When I pulled the shoes off a horse, I would throw them in a pile. If I was real busy, that pile would get bigger and bigger until I was tripping over them. Some were worn out, others broken, some had been there long enough to get rusty. Most of them were useful at one time but now are useless.

    Some of us may at times feel just like that: broken lives, wounds healing, lost jobs, lost loved ones; feeling disappointed, unfulfilled dreams. We are tossed in with the scrap shoes to be trampled on, in desperate need of repair, no purpose, no incentive to change, weary and worn out. Jesus said: Matt.11:28. “Come to Me , you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest…”A pastor once told me: “If you are still breathing, God is not done with you.” The pile of old shoes was getting big one day when a man came in and asked what I do with the old shoes. I said I just throw them out or take them for scrap. He offered to buy them. I said they are worn out or broken. He insisted and finally handed me a small donation  for a bag of them. I never thought about it any more until I was at the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) in Toronto. I was walking from the horse barn to the show ring when something caught my eye. There was a display of welded figurines. I stopped and went to look at them and to my surprise, they were made out of my old shoes. They were polished and chromed and looking just as important as they were when I nailed them on a horse. Don’t ever think that God is done with you because life has thrown you a curve. Phil.1:6. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.”

“And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver [Malachi 3:3]”

One lady proposed to visit a silversmith, and report to them on what he said about the subject.

She begged the silversmith to tell her about the process of refining silver. After he had fully described it to her, she asked, “But Sir, do you sit while the work of refining is going on?”

“Oh, yes madam,” replied the silversmith; “I must sit with my eyes steadily fixed on the furnace, for if the time necessary for refining be exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver will be injured.”

The lady at once saw the beauty, and comfort too, of the expression, “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” God puts us, His children into a furnace to purify us. His eye is steadily intent on the work of purifying, and His wisdom and love are both engaged in the best manner for us. Our trials do not come at random, and He will not let us be tested beyond what we can endure. Before she left, the lady asked one final question, “When do you know the process is complete?”

“Why, that is quite simple,” replied the silversmith. “When I can see my own image in the silver, the refining process is finished.” The process of becoming a Christian is called the process of salvation. Christ has done it all. Ephesians 2:8-10 sums these two processes up 8 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.” THAT IS THE PROCESS OF SALVATION. But once we are Christians God will want us to change to become more like Christ. V.10 “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

  Jesus wants our lives to be purified from the dross that is in our lives from living in the world. God wants us to become more and more like Jesus was and indeed still is. And so he will touch those areas of our lives that need reforming. And it is up to us how we will respond.