Re-fine-ment /ri'finment/
Noun: 1. The process of removing impurities and unwanted substances
2. The improvement of something
This month my team will be working with a local church, Primera Iglesia Bautista de Santa Cruz del Quiche. However the pastor, Brady, wasn’t ready for us to come labor along side him until Wednesday, so we spent the first few days of this week doing odd jobs. My team and I spent all day Tuesday cleaning the Agape in Action facilities. In order to truly clean and fix up the walls, we first had to scrub off all of the mildew before we could put on a fresh coat of paint. While we were scrubbing the mildew it seemed to perfectly symbolize what the Lord has specifically been doing in my heart over the past week and what I believe He will continue to do over the next eleven months. He is refining me. He is forcing me to go back and scrape away all the old lies I’ve believed and deal with old wombs I’ve tried so long to ignore. He’s not allowing me to simply put a fresh coat of paint on my heart, but helping me to first scrub away all the old mildew so that when I’m done it will truly be beautiful from the inside out. He’s forcing me to rebuild all aspects of my identity in Him.
Last night as a squad we each released something, something we had done or had been done to us, or a lie we have believed, and then we burned the slips of paper. Not only did we release something, we then replaced it with the truth of Christ. So last night at 11:30pm on a cold soccer field in Santa Cruz del Quiche I released finding my value in my performance. I know that I am perfect in Christ, He could never love me any more or any less than He does right now, He intimately cares for me, and I find my identity in being the daughter of the High King. These are truths I know in my head, but I’m now fighting to know them in my heart like never before!
