No pain, no gain! That’s what they tell me. And, when I was a coach, that’s what I told them, my runners I mean. It’s trite, but very true. If you want to succeed in the heat of the race, you need to have trained, put in the time, pushed through the pain, burned off the excess.

The same principle applies to boiling water. If you found yourself in the wilderness without any safe water to drink, you would boil the water to burn off and kill the impurities. The same is true of gold.

That’s the image that Peter uses in talking about the Christian’s trials in this life. You can’t purify gold without melting it down and burning away the impurities. So the Christian’s faith, to be perfected, must be tested by fire. God does this for the goal of bringing us to that last day safe and sound so that our faith might result in praise and honor and glory (that would be his praise and honor and glory since He is the one who did all the work) on the last day.

Peter encourages us that in the midst of trials we need not despair, we should not give up, we should not complain as if God were being unkind to us. Rather, with our eyes fixed on Jesus our Living Hope and the resurrection on the last day, we can rejoice for by sending us trials, by turning up the heat God is refining your faith, he is burning away the impurities, burning away the self reliance, burning away the love of the world, burning away everything except pure, simple, faith in Him in His cross, in His suffering, in His forgiveness. So rejoice! It won’t be long! And after all, no pain, no gain!

In Christ
Pastor Ude