I’ve been super-busy lately; too busy to really blog or even think sometimes.  But I have made time to read (it helps I conduct a study time with my teens at work).

As I’ve talked about recently, I make it of importance to constantly surround myself, through reading/news/media/etc, with material that challenges my worldview.  A year ago I read “Year of Biblical Womanhood” by Rachel Held Evans.  It was definitely something that challenged my existing worldview, and I was told to check out “Voices of the True Woman Movement: A Call to Counter-Revolution” by Nancy Leigh DeMoss (and others, including John Piper). Can’t get much more polar opposite than that; ha!  Here is an excerpt I loved on page 122, one that anyone can relate to and grow from:

A real stone like (a wedding ring diamond) can take a good scrubbing, you know. Authentic jewelry is not as delicate as we think. That’s why God can say, as He did in Zechariah 13:9, “I will…refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested.” I long to be a jewel that does not cringe when God chooses to give my soul a hard scrubbing every now and then.

Now I’m not glorifying the suffering it takes to polish my faith. But I AM glorifying the God whose image is reflected on the surface of any smile that is forced to fight through pain and problems to get there…It will be the glow of HIS godliness in your life–HIS patience, HIS perseverance, gleaming through your eyes.

The fire hurts. But it really does make things clearer and allow for God to shine through.