As Silver Refined

What Can You Do When Life Doesn’t Turn Out Like You Planned?

How do you respond when your husband or wife tramples your emotions?  When your boss fires you unexpectedly?  When you lose your life’s savings?  When the child you’ve loved and prayed for turns his back on you and your values?

When disappointments like these smash their way into your life, you may want to scream, “How could God let this happen?”

But what if God didn’t just “let it happen”?  What if the things you call disappointments are really His appointments—events He is using to make you more like Christ?  What if your circumstances are actually the flames of His grace, intended to melt and burn away the undesirable elements in your life, leaving you pure and radiant—like refined silver?

You can be defeated by life’s unavoidable disappointments, or you can become stronger because of them.

Life’s disappointments can send you on a dangerous downward spiral into discouragement, depression, or even despair.  But in this eye-opening book, Kay Arthur guides you to biblical truths that will help you break that cycle and instead embrace disappointment as the cleansing fire God uses to make you—as silver refined—a reflection of His goodness.

In As Silver Refined, Kay Arthur tackles one of the most difficult topics for both new and maturing Christians: disappointments and the seeming contradictory nature of a loving God and the reality of pain.

The book begins with a description of the works of a Silver Smith. He is patient and thorough in removing all the impurities from his silver.  The heat causes the impurities to rise to surface to be removed by the Silver Smith. Arthur did an incredible job at describing the process of refining silver. You quickly realize the way it parallels to our lives with Christ.  Arthur goes on to list five Deadly D's: disappointment, discouragement, dejection, despair, and demoralization.  Through the book, Arthur shows how easy it is to spiral down from disappointment to demoralization if disappointment is not dealt with correctly. Disappointments happen. It's how we handle the heat that matters. She says that we need to look at disappointments as God's appointments. By removing the "D" from disappointment and replacing it with an "H", you change "disappointment" to "His appointment". As the heat increases, God is refining His people by removing their impurities. Fire is required to release the impurities in silver and in the lives of Christians. 

The book has goes into depth on several themes, however the two I most enjoyed were several chapters on meekness followed with a genuine look at what God’s sovereignty really means. Meekness is often coupled with humility and may be seen as being passive or weak   “The opposite of meekness is not strength but rather lack of control, an untamed and unbroken wildness,” Arthur writes. Because meekness is a fruit of the spirit, to be meek is to respond in the spirit. If we’re not acting in meekness, we’re reacting in the flesh. To be meek is to act, not re-act.

If you’ve experienced more of your fair share of pain in life, this book will help locate your struggles in the bigger picture of God’s plan. It is healing, empowering and inspirational.

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”