One Year
What a difference a year can make. The year 2020 showed us that there are many things we can live without and most importantly it taught us what really matters – relationships. Jobs, money, homes and health can come and go, but true relationships last forever.
For some people it was a very tough year full of fear. For other people it was a year that opened doors to new opportunities that would not have otherwise been an option.
Esther understood about how quickly life can change and the difference that a year could make because of that change. After being uprooted from her loving home with her uncle she was taken to Susa where she would live with several other women who were all in the same situation.
Although she was described as having a lovely figure and beautiful, she was required to undergo a full year of beauty treatments. Those treatments were to include six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and cosmetics. The process was similar to exfoliating dry skin and then polishing it with lotions.
We are more like Esther than we know. The Lord is in the process of refining us which will require scrubbing away the parts that are dead and dried up and then pouring His anointing oil over us to continue the refining process.
Instead of looking at 2020 as one of the worst years in our history, we can look deeper and see that God was diligently working to refine us. Scraping away things that held positions in our lives that they shouldn’t and replacing them with deeper and more meaningful relationships with Him and others.
Looking back over the year there were probably times that you wondered how you would make it through all the chaos; but here you are. You are here with purpose and over the last year God has provided many refining treatments to all our lives. The question is, did you change for the better?
God is faithful to complete what He has started and we would be wise to learn from Esther and submit to the refining process, trusting that God’s purpose will be fulfilled.
Be Intentional about submitting to God’s refining process.
Praises and Prayers
Father, thank you for taking the time and effort to refine us. At times we don’t make it easy and I’m so grateful for Your loving patience and promises. Thank you for showing us the many things that we have placed before You and I pray that we will remove them and give You the proper place in our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Messages from His Word
1 Peter 1: 6-7
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.