Grace, Glory Fand Guts Part Ii

I enjoy watching the Discovery Channel series: Bering Sea Gold. The gold miners build homemade dredges which they float out off the coast of Nome, Alaska. The gold divers then vacuum gold up from the bottom of the Bering Sea.

When they clean their sluice boxes they can tell immediately if they have gold because there is what they call “color.” They then separate the color which may range in size from a fleck to a granule or to a nugget of gold. Then they place everything that looks like gold into a pan and heat it on a very hot fire which essentially burns off anything and everything that is not gold, i.e., all the impurities and dross, so that what remains in the pan is pure, refined gold. Before the gold was unrefined but after going through the fire it is refined.

That is what the word character means… character is like the metal that passes through the refiner’s fire. It is what is left. In the same way silver refiners heat the silver until all that remains is what they call “sterling silver.” After the fire the metal emerges stronger and purer. After adversity our characters emerge stronger than ever.

One of the upsides of adversity in the Christian’s life is that it builds Christian character. And our text says that character then builds or produces hope.

C. Character Produces Hope

“Character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us and has given his Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.” Romans 5:5

One of my favorite verses is Philippians 1:6, “And I am certain that God, who began a good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

When we live with the awareness that God is at work in our lives it puts everything else in perspective. If God is at work in your life then adversity has a purpose and through that adversity and trouble, God is at work developing your character. And as you discover the ongoing faithfulness of God is sustaining you through adversity you have a growing hope that God can sustain and keep you though this life and into the next.

At some point in our spiritual maturity we develop an unshakable faith and confidence in God’s faithfulness.

There is a story about a submarine that was rammed by a ship off the coast of Massachusetts. It sank immediately trapping the entire crew inside. Every effort was made to rescue the crew but it was futile. Near the end of the rescue attempt a diver heard a tapping on the steel wall of the sunken sub. He rested his diving helmet against the sub to listen more closely and as he listened he realized he was hearing Morse code. The tapping was repeatedly spelling out the question, “Is there any hope?” (Ben Patterson, The Grand Essentials) Our text says, “This hope will not lead to disappointment… for God has filled our hearts with his love.” Romans 5:5