LIVING PURIFIED

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Remove the dross from the silver, and a silversmith can produce a vessel; remove wicked officials from the king’s presence, and his throne will be established through righteousness.

Proverbs 25:4-5        

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If we’re not careful, life can become mundane and routine. Days can run into one another as we rise, carry out routines, and then lay down to prepare for the next day’s schedule. We have even created a cultural term for this phenomenon, “Groundhog Day,” based on a movie of the same title. In the movie, the main actor kept waking up in the same day over and over and over again, thus the comparison to the dull, commonplace experience life can become sometimes.

That is, if we allow it to be.

You see, we have some say in the attitude we carry toward our lives, right? We can choose to see life as boring and unexciting if we want but we can also choose to see it as anything but that, to view every day as a blessing and thrill as we seek to become more and more to be the person the Lord wants us to be, living in a way that pursues purification as we allow Him to shape and mold us into His own image (Genesis 1:27).

The truth of the matter is that we are imperfect people who live in an imperfect world. That’s not a truth that should bring us despair. Rather it’s a truth that should buoy us up in hope and joy and peace. No one will ever be perfect and that means there’s always room for improvement, always room for refinement, and always room for reformation.

This is why we need to be living in a way that seeks purification each and every day, surrendering and opening our hearts and minds to the Lord so He can continue to do His righteous and holy work within us, changing and transforming us from the inside out while leading us to accomplish His purposes.

Our scripture today, straight from the words of Solomon, is focused on the matter of purification and offers us two things to always keep in mind as we strive to become pure and unadulterated, placing our sin affliction in remission through the pursuit of a sanctification and righteousness that only the Lord can bring. Look at these verses:

Remove the dross from the silver, and a silversmith can produce a vessel; remove wicked officials from the king’s presence, and his throne will be established through righteousness. Proverbs 25:4-5

The first thing we need to keep in mind is that the Lord can’t make us into something special unless we submit ourselves to His handiwork. We’re the silver in this proverb and our inclination to sinfulness is the dross, the impurity which subtracts from our value and use. Take away the dross from silver and something of worth (a vessel) can be produced. Take away sin from a person and you have someone of worth for the Lord to use to further His kingdom here on earth and help others to know their savior and find salvation.

Question: Have you submitted yourself into the hands of the Lord, the Master Craftsman who is ready to purify you by displacing your sin and replacing it with righteousness?

The second matter we are asked to consider when it comes to living in purity centers on those who we associate with. For it is counterproductive when the Lord is trying to cleanse us from the inside out while we are allowing ourselves to be recontaminated by the sinfulness of others.

This is what Solomon was trying to get at in the second of the two verses we’re looking at today. If the king’s throne was to have a reputation of being pure and right, it needed people surrounding and supporting it who were just that, pure and just. A throne of righteousness could (and was) contaminated when officials were wicked and so the call was to eliminate those officials to avoid corruption. In other words, the call was to remove the dross (wicked officials) from the silver (the king’s throne).

Friends, we can be just as easily compromised by the people we connect with, offsetting the purifying work the Lord is trying to do within us. And rather than allow ourselves to be conformed to their sinfulness, perhaps we should allow the Lord to use us to conform them to our image. In other words, righteousness and holiness can be just as contagious, infectious, and powerful as sin and the Lord can use us as instruments to transfer His power into the lives of others.

We can do this when we strive to live in purity, placing our lives in the hands of the One who is purity and perfection personified.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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