We have this hope of the glory of God, but it doesn’t just drop out of the sky into our laps. It’s is forged through suffering, which, by way of perseverance, produces that thing called character, and hope is then born - a hope that is real, living, vital and communicated through God’s love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
The very same morning, I happened to read about Saeed Abedeni, an Iranian Christian, though now a US citizen, and whose predicament under trial in Iran was splashed across the media over the weekend. I was particularly struck by what the article reported of Saeed’s response to his sufferings. it said :
Saeed has been detained since his arrest last September; he has endured beatings, torture and threats at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran. In a moving letter to his wife, published last week, Saeed wrote about his ordeal:
“One day I am told I will be freed and allowed to see my kids on Christmas (which was a lie) and the next day I am told I will hang for my faith in Jesus. One day there are intense pains after beatings in interrogations, the next day they are nice to you and offer you candy.”
Saeed also reflected on how God is transforming him through these mixed experiences:
“I always wanted God to make me a godly man. I did not realise that in order to become a godly man we need to become like steel under pressure. It is a hard process of warm and cold to make steel. These hot and colds only make you a man of steel for moving forward in expanding His Kingdom.”
So what is talked about in the Bible is mirrored in real life. God has a foundry for manufacturing steel in our lives, and it is often through the people he places around us. Sometimes through persecution, sometimes ridicule and at other times rejection or simple frustration, we’re poured into the melting pot of God’s steel furnace. In order that he might make us into men and women of steel....like Saeed.
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