“God works all things together for good for those love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)

This well-known and oft-recited scripture encourages us during difficult times such as those we are experiencing in our world today.  Yet if we are totally honest, there are moments when it is hard to hang on to the promise of this scripture. We question―can God really work good out of what feels so bad? It is so easy to be driven by our feelings instead of by our faith, to view adversity as a totally negative experience. But there is a positive side to adversity we can embrace, in fact, we need to embrace.

Adversity provides an opportunity for God to refine us, so that we can learn to live our faith authentically. And what is authentic faith? Not just to say what we believe, but to live what we believe.

It’s living a life that reflects the character of Christ in good times and especially in difficult times. The awesome qualities that we see in the life of Jesus—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, compassion, faithfulness, selflessness—are to become evident in our lives. But for that to happen, for these qualities to be formed in us, a refining process must take place within us. And that refining process involves adversity! God uses adversity that is part of the human experience (because we live in a broken world), and He uses it for our good.

Let me provide you with an illustration. For just a moment imagine that you have a gold nugget in your possession. Because there is gold in that nugget, it is valuable. But in order for the gold in that nugget to be used for a higher purpose, to become a piece of fine gold jewelry or to be painted on a beautiful piece of porcelain sculpture, that gold nugget has to be refined. There is gold in that nugget, but it isn’t pure gold. It is mixed with impurities.

So a goldsmith of old would place a gold nugget in a crucible―a fire-proof container that could withstand high temperatures. Then he would add the heat of a fire. As the gold nugget melted, its impurities would rise to the surface. The goldsmith would then skim off the impurities. This process would continue as the goldsmith carefully added heat, skimming off the impurities until he knew that what was left was pure gold. And the way he knew when it was pure gold was as he peered into that crucible and saw his reflection―his undistorted reflection.

In John 1:11-12, it says that all who believe in Jesus and receive him as their savior, they become a child of God. That’s a covenant promise that means when you believe in Jesus and accept him as your Savior, an awesome miracle takes place―your identity is changed. You are embraced by God as His child.

Like that gold nugget, because you are a child of God, you have great value. But with the privilege of being His valued child comes an expectation—an expectation that we who have been adopted into the family of God, we who are His adopted ones, are to become like His only begotten Son. We are to fulfill God’s purpose, His divine destiny for our lives, just like Jesus did. And to be used by God and fulfill His great plan and purpose for each of our lives, like the gold nugget, we need to be refined. So God uses the fire of adversity to be the heat that causes our impurities to rise to the surface.

It’s when life gets difficult, when the people we live with and work with become challenging, when we are filled with fear, apprehension and uncertainty, that our impurities rise up. Think about it for a moment!

When the heat of adversity hits us, what are the words that come out of our mouths? What are our actions and reactions? Are they loving, kind, forgiving, compassionate? Are they golden? Or are they impure?

Instead of railing against this time of adversity, instead bemoaning the fact that we are in this pandemic and not sure what the future holds, we can choose to embrace this time and allow God to use it for our good―allowing Him to reveal to us what needs to be perfected in our lives. And because God is loving and compassionate, He doesn’t expect us to be refined or perfected by our own strength. Jesus went to the Cross to save us, but he also went to the Cross so he could send us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised would be our Helper.

In this time of adversity, the Holy Spirit can help us by revealing what needs to be changed in our lives, He can create in us the desire to change, and empower us to make the choice to change. But because we are to work in partnership with the Holy Spirit, we are the ones who ultimately make the choice to change. We pull the trigger to change. To replace impatience with patience, the desire for revenge with choice to forgive, harshness with kindness, disloyalty with faithfulness, callousness with compassion, dishonesty with truth.

As these days of sheltering-in turn into weeks and months, I know that our instinct is to say: “I just want things to get back to normal.” But what if we embrace this present adversity by allowing God to do some perfecting of our attitudes, actions, and reactions? If we do, I believe we can come out of this time embracing a “new normal”, a better normal, a normal where we reflect the image of Christ in our lives better than we did back in February!

This present adversity provides us with the opportunity to learn how to live our faith more authentically. It’s an opportunity to be refined as pure gold! Yes, it’s a golden opportunity!