Deep Creek Baptist Church

When a smith can see his own reflection in the metal, he then knows the metal is ready to be removed from the fire.  God’s purpose is to make each one of us as believer’s to be more and more like Christ Jesus everyday.  When the trials and the heartaches come, God knows what He’s doing.  It has always been His will and His desire to reveal more of Himself in the lives of the believers.  So the next time you are suffering, stop and think, “there must be a purpose for why I am suffering”.  Know that as the impurities are skimmed from the surface, the image of the Son will come forth as shinning as gold.  Friends that is only the beginning of the process.  For once the gold is refined and the Smith sees His image, He now has the gold in a place to make it pliable.

This is when the Smith takes the refined gold and makes something beautiful out of it, which reflects His glory and His craft.  This is something the Smith says, “Yes, this is my creation and it is very good!”  Can you hear the Lord saying this about you?  Perhaps you are just beginning to bubble as the impurities rise to the top.  Just what after the fire comes the glory!  So friend let go of grudges, heartache, bad attitudes, selfishness, bitterness and plain ole down right meanness…let go and let God!

He had knowledge of God’s power, wisdom and presence at every place in Creation.  He knew God ruled with sovereignty the temporal and spiritual world.  His writings teach us that evil is personified in Satan and that Satan hates the people of God and delivers them to malice.  Satan is subject to God, reports to God and can only do what God permits him to do.  We are born into iniquity and are personal sinners; this sin is acknowledged by Job in his youth!  Job believed in the resurrection of the body and knew he would see God after his death.

Most importantly, Job teaches us that man needs an intercessor to appeal to God on his behalf.  God gives a man (Jesus, the God-Man) who will save people from their sin and act as a mediator between God and man.  Friend do you have the patience of Job to wait for an intercessor; a mediator who will come to God on your behalf?  Do you know Jesus Christ as that person?  Is He your personal Lord and Savior…Friend have you confessed your life over time Him?  He is the only One standing between you and the devil.  If He is not fighting on your side, then you have made Him a bystander in the battle for your soul–without Jesus you LOSE!

When I was younger, we used to play on and around some railroad tracks.  We would hear the trains coming and the engineer would blow the whistle it was really neat as a kid to see the trains.  While I was in Russia, we were riding the train from Moscow to Samara and we heard the whistle.  About the same time, as we were coming around the bend, we could see people ahead of the train on the tracks.  The train began to slow down and the brakes squealed.

This person was walking on the tracks.  By the grace of God, the engineer was able to stop mere inches in front of him. It is a terrible, terrible tragedy that anyone can feel such anguish and despair that they believe it would be better for them to die than to live.  We got off the train and saw the engineer assisting the person, people watched from the side, and several stood along their fence, like spectators at some sport. No one offered a blanket, a place for the person to sit and collect themselves, or even so much as a kind word or a glass of water.  This was Russia not even a glass of Vodka!

Sometimes God causes the seemingly smallest of things to happen, to enable us to be there when someone is “traveling along the wrong track”.  Here this person it was later translated to us was at the end of their rope and like Job had lost everything.  Now they wanted to end it all but could not think of doing it by their own hand, so they would let the train strike them.  I can only imagine the grief this person experienced, but then I call your attention back to Job…can you relate to his grief, no; well let me continue forward to another person, our Lord Jesus Christ.

His death on the cross was not done out of grief nor despair rather from glory!  He willingly stayed on the tracks so that you and I will never have to.  Now there is the Father who like Job was a bystander as His Son paid the ultimate price knowing that in the future, many would reject the Gift; many would still blaspheme His name; many would still go to Hell unrepented sinners when His Son already paid the price.  Friend let me be clear with you, trouble will come, but nothing you cannot handle.  You may have health issues or problems, but take heart in knowing that Jesus Christ overcame them all!  There is not a single thing in this world worth you taking your own life for; yet Jesus Christ laid down His life so that you may live!  Would you let go of your burden and cast all your cares and worries upon Jesus Christ…He loves you!

Keep the Son in your eyes,

Dr. Ben J. Lahay