Faith and fire
A Simple Message
“That the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
– 1 Peter 1:7
Faith and fire are two of the most-common words we encounter in Scripture.
The word faith appears 391 times in the New King James Version, with the word fire appearing 515 times. So when we find one verse containing both words, I believe it warrants our attention.
Particularly, in this case when we see the subject of this verse being the judgment of our life before our Lord Jesus Christ.
Recently I had a conversation with someone who has been living in fear of that coming judgment.
Not concerned for the fate of their immortal soul, but rather fearful of having to be faced by their past failings in the presence of God.
That conversation led me to the above verse. I was reminded of one of the most-important facets of Christian life: the testing of our faith.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily,” in reference to any boasts he could make about the quality of his Christian life.
That is to say, Paul admitted that every day Christ revealed to him the ways in which he has failed and the ways in which he needed to grow.
In these moments, the genuineness of Paul’s faith was tested by the fire of Christ’s revelation. Paul was forced to choose whether he would continue in his current path, or make the necessary changes to be a better version of himself the following day.
Paul tells us his choice was to “die daily,” to leave behind the errors of his past and move forward being a better person for it.
For the genuine believer, our faith will be tested in this way.
The Holy Spirit, like a fire in our bones, as the prophet put it in Jeremiah 20:9, will reveal to us what we need to let go of, what we need to hold on to, and who we need to be. In this way our faith can be compared to gold.
The quality of gold is largely determined by the impurities contained within it.
The only way to identify and separate the impurities from the gold is to heat it with fire; only then does the genuine gold shine.
Likewise, when our faith is genuine, we allow God to reveal to us the impurities within us, and we agree to separate from those impurities to the best of our abilities.
As in the conversation I mentioned above, my encouragement to anyone fearing this day of revelation would be to remember that it won’t be the first time your faith has faced that fire.
The genuine believer faces that fire every day, and grows to be more pure and more genuine in faith because of it.