THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST III

“If you are renewed by grace, and were to meet your old self, I am sure you would be very anxious to get out of his company.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

Grace

Grace never comes to proliferate sin. If anything, it comes to tame it. For grace does not only create an escape route from the consequences of sin, but also creates an escape route from sin itself. In Michael Horton’s, The Agony of Deceit, he wrote that “Someone confronted Martin Luther upon his rediscovery of the biblical doctrine of justification, with the remark:

"If this is true, a person could simply live as he pleased!"

"Indeed!" answered Luther.

"Now, what pleases you?"

Augustine was the great preacher of grace during the fourth and fifth centuries. Although, his understanding of the doctrine of justification did not have the fine-tuned precision of Luther’s, Augustine's response on this point was similar to Luther's. He said that the

YOUR WORTH DETERMINES YOUR PAIN 3; THE CRUCIBLE

"Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of." - Charles Spurgeon

Most crucibles are made of graphite. This affords them the ability to withstand enormous heat; melting any material inside. After the gold has been taken through the painful process of breaking, by the refiner, the next stage is; The Crucible

The refiner puts the broken, crushed, unrefined ore into a “crucible”; a fireproof MELTING pot able to withstand great heat. The crucible goes into the furnace - a device used for extraction of metals from ore in refineries, and chemical plants. It's a heat source - which has enough heat necessary for expulsion of other metallic impurities undermining the quality of the gold.

Just as the furnace is used to purify gold in the crucible, God, our refiner, uses heat to purify us. You'll note that, the refiner doesn't just throw the gold into the furnace. He