God Knows The Way That I Take

“But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
Job 23:10 (NIV)

Not too long ago, one of my students was admiring a blown glass piano in my office. After explaining to her about the process of how glass is made and that sand is the major ingredient, she said, “I can’t believe something as ugly as sand can become as beautiful as blown glass!”

It’s amazing how the words out of a child’s mouth can reinforce such deep biblical truths. Immediately, I began to picture what condition I was in before Christ saved me. John Newton’s song says it perfectly, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…” The most undesirable looking sand is “eye candy” compared to what I was, what you were before a loving Father gave His only son for us. Our sin, the dark filthy stain that separated us from having any kind of relationship with God, when laid upon His son on the cross was so reprehensible that He could not even look at Jesus. For one moment in history, God the Father turned His back on His only Son, due to the depth of the filth laid on Jesus. But just as 3,000 degree fire takes sand, gypsum, soda ash, limestone and dolomite and turns it into pure glass, the refiner’s fire through the blood of Christ takes our dark sin and makes us as pure as Christ Himself.

As the heavenly angels gaze upon our lives and the lives of those saints who have gone before us; as they look upon us as the trophies of His grace, they must have a similar reaction to the one of my student commenting about my blown glass piano. I can hear the angels proclaiming, “I can’t believe that someone as wicked and vile as (fill in our name) can become as beautiful as Christ.

As we bring Him our praise and worship today, take a moment to reflect on who you were, who you are and who you’d be today without Christ in your life. And then stand in awe, sing in wonder, sit in humiliation and walk in a worthy manner as one who has been blessed beyond measure, comprehension or any merit of our own.

“Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD.

"Though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red as crimson,

they shall be like wool.”
Isaiah 1:18

Pastor MJ