Yesterday our choir sang the song “Refiner’s Fire” in our morning worship. When I was in my 30’s and 40’s I sang it as a solo. At the time a singer Steve Green had made it well known. I only sang it a couple of times for the message it had was just too great for me to convey through my own singing. I wanted so much for the message to be true for me, but the weight of my past was still in possession of me.

From the church service I went to the class our counseling group is leading for married couples. The topic of the class for yesterday was intimacy. The message was brought out that intimacy best starts if we can be intimate with God Himself. If our trust is strong in Him, we can also then have strong intimacy with our spouse. I mentioned to the class my struggle with intimacy in the earlier years I wrote in the first paragraph. At that point in my life I only wanted to trust God. I deeply wanted to serve Him, but it was too great of a risk having my past and letting it be known.

God’s refining fire wants to cleanse us as He has been doing for me. This refining fire destroys the fear of people knowing and replaces it with a trust that longs for others to know this intimacy for themselves. This trust is a foundational point for intimacy with God and with our spouse or anyone else we want to have as significant in our lives. If this is you, battling as I did, to trust God, I challenge you to take this first step of sharing/telling someone your deep secret/s. God so wants to free you as He has me!