Graded grains

If you’re of a certain age you will know the rest of that strap-line…. “Graded grains make finer flour”. It’s from a series of adverts run by Homepride Flour some years ago. You can find them on YouTube if you want to look.

In the dark ages, BH, (Before Homepride), flour had to be sifted through a sieve before putting it into the cake mixture. There would be impurities and lumps in it which needed sifting out. so that brings me to Sifting….

Have you ever read the book of Job? Have you ever read it and thought ‘thank goodness God doesn’t let that sort of stuff happen to us’ ?

Some of you may not have read Job at all so let me fill you in slightly. Basically what happens is this. There is a man who loves God and happens to be quite comfortably off too. Life for Job is pretty good on all fronts. Then one day the Angels came to present themselves before God, and Satan sneaked in at the back of the line. God asked him, “where have you come from?” and Satan’s answer is “from roaming through the earth and going to and fro in it”. There is a hidden meaning in those words. Satan was saying ‘the earth is my kingdom and I go wherever I please there’.

It was a challenge to God. Satan was saying I control what goes on on Earth. God’s reply was quick and sure. He said “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like Him. He is blameless and upright, shuns evil and fears Me”.

Satan responded that the only reason Job feared God was because God blessed and protected him. Take that away God, and Job will be done with you. So God replied, ‘well you can do what you want to Job, but you cannot take his life.’ You see God knew that Job trusted Him absolutely and He knew that His trust in Job would be vindicated.

What follows is that Satan attacks everything that Job has; his possessions, his family and even inflicts disease on Job. Job cries out to God, hoping for an answer but none seems to come. His friends gather round and offer advice – not all of it good by a long chalk. Despite the misery of his current circumstance, Job never turns his back on God or distances himself from God. He asks questions, he complains that this all seems unfair, but he does it out of a desire to speak to God face to face. Job wrestled with God, he did not go cool toward God. Some of his attitudes and some of his understanding is wrong, but at the close of the book God majestically speaks to Job and puts things in perspective for him.

In the last chapter Job grasps this revelation of who God is “I know that You can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted”. He emerges closer to God than before, knowing Him better than most of us probably. What happened? He was sifted. The impurities and the lumps were sifted out.

Who else went through the sifting process?

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail….” Luke 22 v 31

Note that neither Jesus nor the Father had refused to allow the sifting to occur. Jesus simply says that He has prayed for Simon Peter’s faith not to fail. We all know how Simon Peter was tempted to deny Jesus on three occasions and how immediately he was remorseful, and how after the resurrection Jesus sought out Simon Peter to restore him with the three times question in John 21, “Simon…do you love me”. Not long after that we find a restored and confident Simon Peter preaching to a massive crowd and 3000 people being saved that day.

So, what’s this got to do with us?

Are things difficult for you? Has life dealt you some major disappointments? Are you dealing with issues that appear to be unresolveable? Are you asking where is God in all this? Are your prayers apparently going unheard? Perhaps you have sought God for healing and it hasn’t come. What is going on? Where are you God? Have you put God ‘on hold’? Have you put Him to one side a bit, in order to ‘get on with your life’?

Well, perhaps God is allowing you to be sifted? “Why?” You might ask. “What’s the point in that?”

Well here is the point. The sifting is designed to remove the impurities and the hard lumps from our lives. The hope is that in all that is going on we will come closer to God, not go cool on Him. Yes we can question Him but not judge Him. In a subtle way, when we say it’s not fair, we are really saying to God, ‘I can understand this better than You, obviously.

Maybe God wants to see what’s in our heart. Maybe He wants us to see what’s in our hearts. What is more important to us – an answer to our prayer or knowing Him? His provision or His presence? Seeking His hand (what He can do for us) or seeking His face (who He is to us)?

Maybe, and I think it is, the sifting that God allows is to prepare us for what lies ahead. I personally feel that this has been my experience more than once in my life. In the middle of it, it feels hard and it took effort and determination to hold on to God, even when things felt hard and it felt as if the spark was no longer there. Looking back, these have been times of refining, times of learning to hold on to God no matter what and through it all to pursue Him for more of Himself. That last bit has been in fits and starts, depending on whether I am letting myself get absorbed in my circumstances or learning to fix my eyes on Jesus. I think Hebrews 12 v 2 has it nailed when it tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. At times like this He is at work in us and it’s not time to walk out of the surgery in a huff, if we want to allow Him to change us ‘from one degree of glory to another’ and prepare us for what He has called us to.

Maybe, just maybe, we don’t get to do great things in the kingdom of God without being tested and trained first.

Maybe at the same time He wants to show us off to Satan…..”look at my servant ———- (insert your name here). See how faithful they are. See how they trust me no matter what.” You see, we have an audience all the time in the spiritual realm. Nothing we do is hidden from view there, either to the angels or to demons.

Peter came out of this a different man (as did Job). Peter went from being impulsive, up one minute down the next, unreliable to being considered the leader of the Apostles. Wouldn’t you like to come through any sifting process like that? Because the truth is, as Homepride rightly pointed out, Graded grains make finer flour.