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God's Grinding and Sifting Process "But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." James 1:4 Introduction "There has to be a lesson in here somewhere about the Christian life," said a local pastor after we had just toured the Union Carbide plant in Bishop, CA. My father-in-law still worked there before his retirement. He showed us how the plant would grind and sift huge boulders into finely ground powder to make tungsten. It could very well have been gold. God takes the rough, jagged, huge boulders representing our lives and continues refining them down to solid gold if we let Him. The process is not easy. Neither was it easy to take huge rocks and get something profitable out of them. Main Thought of Scripture Part of the process God uses is to allow trials to come into our lives not to hurt us but to help us. Peter said, "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth be tried with fire." God exhorts us to have patience in trials because it perfects us or makes us complete to go through all life experiences. Those experiences are not what we would choose but may be necessary for this refining process. Application At the end of the refining process in our lives is Christ-likeness. Remember that Romans 8:28 indicates the purpose of God turning bad things into good "is to be conformed to the image of Christ" (II Cor. 4:7-10). It tells us to withstand trials so that "the life of Christ may be manifested in our mortal body." God is in the process of making us like Jesus. Jesus is our Lord and Saviour because of all He suffered on the cross and overcame by His resurrection for us. So suffering is part of the process. Admonition We must not view trials and suffering through them as evil. James 1:13 says, "God tempteth no man with evil." The evil that comes can be used to effectively claim victory over it through the resources of our faith in Christ. It can also be viewed as even "a gift" (v. 17) to make us like Christ and see the good that can come from our lives through it. We do not have to understand it at the time or get all our questions answered. We must persevere so "patience can have its perfect work," and we might profit by the good even in bad experiences He allows. That is the lesson of the Union Carbide Plant. Dan Nelson,