This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

The crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the
heart. That's Proverbs 17 verse 3. We're looking at daily drive time devotions
today at Proverbs chapter 17 and that's the verse that we're going to focus on.

The crucible is for silver, the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.
When you think about tests, you think about school, you think about the end of
the school year, you think of the dreaded final test, whether it's in grade
school or high school or college or graduate school. These final tests are
constructed to see what you've retained from a wonderful year of lectures and
acquired reading and completed projects, or they're constructed to figure out
what you could cram into your head the week before.

Whatever they're constructed for, the truth is when we finish a school year and
we take all these tests, those tests are going to vary greatly according to your
stage in life. Whether you're finishing second grade or seventh grade or college
or 12th grade, the teacher is going to design the test in a way that fits you,
that stretches you. God is the wisest teacher of all, and he has a separate test
not just for each grade but for every one of us as individuals, and Proverbs
compares the tests that God sends into our lives to the purifying of gold.

Gold is fired at a high temperature to burn away the impurities, and the end
result is a pure luminous substance living out its created purpose, to shine, to
beautify. Well, God wants to do the same thing in my heart, in your heart, so
that you can live out your created purpose. If only he could do it without
tests.

If only somehow we just shone and we were beautiful and everything worked
without having to face the tests. But we are imperfect people, and so the
impurities have to be burned out. We live in an imperfect world, and so the
impurities have to be burned out.

And the truth is, fire is not comfortable. And God's tests don't always easily
come either. When life gets uncomfortable, do not make the mistake of thinking
that it always must be that there's something wrong with you.

I've talked to a lot of people who think that they are being judged by God for
something they've done, when the truth is, they're simply facing one of the
inevitable tests of life. Now, no doubt, sometimes we do need to be corrected by
God for the wrong things that we do. Whenever you have this strange, cloudy
feeling that you've done something wrong, you can't really put your finger on
it, you don't even know really what it is that you did wrong, you just feel like
things aren't going right, I must have done something wrong, God's getting me.

I've found that when the feeling is strange and cloudy and you don't really know
what it is, that's Satan trying to make you feel guilty. And when God is telling
you you've done something wrong, when he's correcting you, he puts a pinpoint of
light on it, he lets you clearly know what you've done wrong. Many of the times
when things are going wrong in our lives, it's test.

And God uses it to purify our lives. So if your life's tough right now, next
time life gets tough, pray for the wisdom to ask God, "God, what is it that you
want me to learn from this? " Let's ask him right now.

"God, this tough time that I'm going through right now, I've been thinking about
how to get out of it, I've been thinking about how to deal with it, but I take a
moment today to ask you, what is it that you want me to learn from this? What is
it that you want me to learn about you? What is it that you want me to learn
about myself?

What is it that you want me to learn about faith, about hope, about love? God,
you're not allowing me to go through this for no purpose. And so I pray that I
would watch how you are testing my heart, what you're doing to my heart and
character, even through this.

God, not every circumstance that comes into my life is good. Satan sends some of
them for evil, but you are good. And you can take even the evil that others or
Satan might want to have come into my life, and you can use even that to test me
and to use it for good.

So Lord, I look to you right now and I ask you, "What is it that you want me to
learn? How do you want me to grow, even in this? " I ask it in Jesus' name,
amen.