A New Day

By: Pastor Johnie Akers     

Zechariah 13:9, “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried.”  When a new calf is born, sometimes it doesn’t immediately begin to breathe on its own.  It is then that a farmer may take what could seem to be unorthodox action.  The farmer will take a long stick and begin jabbing it up each nostril of the animal.  This incessant prodding irritates the calf into spontaneously initiating respirations, which in turn forces its blood pressure to increase and accelerate the calf’s heart pumping.  As a result of this radical and painful action, a calf, which might otherwise die, is forcefully provoked to live.  Honestly, my eyes water when I think of the proposition of having a stick forced up my nose.  But from the calf’s perspective, the alternative is death.  In our Scripture lesson today, Zechariah, the Old Testament prophet, says to Israel that the Lord would “try” the remnant of His people.  The word literally means to “test, probe, examine, or assay.”  It characterizes a process that may, at the time, seem harsh and insensitive.  Why would the Lord “try” His people?  Why would the Lord allow the ruthless probing of His children?  As unsettling as God’s sovereign processes may be in our lives, we must understand that there are times when God is more concerned with our spiritual viability than He is with our comfort.  We sometimes feel as if God is somehow not fair when He permits us to pass through the testing fires of adversity, but only until we achieve a mature perspective do we realize that it is in the testing and probing times of life that the barriers to us becoming all that God intends for us to be are removed.  Gold and silver must be refined in fire to remove the dross.  I like to sum it up with this tongue twister that you can easily remember:  Providential painful processes produce purity.  Like the farmer, the goal is not death but life.  God desires each of us to live a life full of vitality, and purity, so that He can ultimately fulfill in us His purposes, as we patiently submit to His sovereign plan for this and each new day.