Sifted or purified?

The past few months have quite difficult. The Furrs have a looming issue, soon to be announced, that has compounded the severity of everyday variances of life. It has seemed like non-stop challenges, colic to run-on ear infections to the flu (currently). It is taking sheer willpower and grit to get out of bed and do the day.

A phrase has been running through my mind regularly, "You are being sifted like wheat... sifted like wheat." I attributed it to a verse somewhere in the Bible that referred to allowing the Enemy to have his way with us, perhaps a test of loyalty. Somewhere in my pooped-out, mixed-up mind I crossed some theology and came up with a dangerous concoxtion... "Maybe God has handed me over to the Enemy to be sifted, like Job." So one Sunday I asked a friend, "What's the context of the phrase 'sifted like wheat'?" And he reminded me that it has more to do with the day when God will separate those who say they follow him from those who will actually receive eternal life, a kind of "goats and sheep" thing (see Matt. 3:12). So does this phrase really have anything to do with the difficuly of life recently? No, absolutely not. The phrase has sought more to discourage me and defeat me than actually reflect the reality of God's presence with me amidst the current circumstances. Therefore, I think I can acurrately surmise that it has been the voice of the Accuser. He wiggled his way into a small crack and has been camping out.

Job, a man truly tested by God, said, "But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me I will come forth as gold." (23:10) The last few days I have started to run a new thought through my head, "What if all of these trials are a process of purification? Not a test to see if I can 'hang in there', but an opportunity to throw off some of the things that hinder, or are dead weight, and become more like the Christ I claim to follow?" Now there is the hope that gives me the strength to wash the toddler's pukey clothes and nuzzle my grumpy,teething baby. It allows me to fall asleep quickly at night, lifting the paranoia that it's not a seek and destroy mission, but rather a time to draw off of the reality that I am His child and I will not be snatched from His hand. A time of affirmation, not despair.

A wrong combo of right theologial truths can be dangerous. Understand context, compare it against known truths, and get a real perspective on what God's doing.