Into the Refinery - Psalm 66:10-12
Passage (NIV): Psalm 66:10-12
Preacher: Mark Kingston
The Journey
There's a journey God will lead us on (as individuals and as churches) when he's getting ready to use us. This journey has five stages to it:
Longing → Refining → Empty → Drenched → Overflow.
One thing is worth saying up front. This isn't always a tidy linear experience. Most of us are working on more than one stage at a time, and we go back through them more than once. So as you read, look for which stage you sense you are in and which stage you think the church here in Gibsons is in.
[Click on the titles below to explore each stage of the journey]
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It starts with longing. One of the first signs God is getting us ready for more is that we start aching for something more… something that isn't here… yet. That kind of longing is a gift of God that grows in us.
God-given longings can look like all sorts of things, including:A growing compassion for people in this town who are convinced that nobody cares
An increasing desire for your neighbours to become genuinely curious about Jesus
A grief over families that have broken apart and a longing for them to be reconciled
God-given longings take lots of different shapes, but they all point in the same direction: “Please Lord - do more here. May your kingdom come.” If you relate to this, it’s a good sign God is doing something new in you…getting you ready for something!
Here’s why God-given longings are so important: they increase your dissatisfaction with the status quo. That matters, because when God says “Come and follow me!”, where he often leads next is into the refinery. If you were comfortable with how things are, you might say “No!”. So - longing makes you moveable…
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You can see “the refinery” in all sorts of places in the Bible, but I chose Psalm 66 because it does an amazing job at describing how hard it is: like a net you can't escape, a heavy weight set precisely on your back, like going through fire and water.
For us, a refinery experience is characterised by obedience and hardship. God says come… and we follow Him… but then things seem to get harder not easier. Think of the Israelites fresh from their miraculous Red Sea Crossing finding out that ahead of them are some long years in the refining confines of the Wilderness.
It’s really important to know that the refinery isn't a punishment. It has a purpose. God uses the refinery to make room in us by removing the stuff that gets in the way - just like a silversmith heats silver because that’s the only way to get the impurities out. The toughness of the refinery pushes us back to somewhere essential - a growing awareness of how much we need God.
One last thing: There then comes a moment at the end of refining when it feels like there's nothing left inside you. The clutter has gone. The new thing hasn't arrived. And you find yourself (or your church finds itself) kind of empty, on its knees with one thing left to say: “Lord, we just want you. How much longer must this hardship continue?”
That's not failure. That's the threshold. That's the moment God has been waiting for…
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The end of Psalm 66 lands here. You brought us out into a place of abundance. The Hebrew word translated as abundance has two possible meanings, and I suspect both are intended.
Spaciousness: After the compacting pressure of refining, there's room to breathe again
Drenching: The picture here is of ground rained on for so long that it has become a lake. Anyone who has been on this coast from October to April knows what that looks like!
For a church, drenching has its own feel. People get hungrier for Jesus. The Holy Spirit's presence becomes more tangible. Prayers start carrying a weight they didn't have before, and things start happening in answer to them. And there's a deep joy that just spills over into everything.
Ezekiel 47 puts the same picture in motion. The river of life starts ankle deep, then knee deep, then waist deep, then deep enough that you have to swim.
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In Ezekiel, the river flows out of the temple and everything dead it touches comes back to life. Even the Dead Sea, of all places, ends up with fish in it. It is a picture of the flow of abundant life. This is where the journey is heading. God doesn't fill a church and stop there. He fills it so it overflows His life into the neighbourhoods and communities around it.
So let your imagination go for a moment. What would the river of life look like if it overflowed in Gibsons?
Imagine if Gibsons was the kind of place where addiction's grip began to loosen, where people who'd been trapped for years started to walk free…
Imagine if generous community in our churches meant that loneliness in this town began to decline…
Imagine if forgiveness started to flow here in ways it hasn't before, with old fractures in families and friendships getting put back together…
Imagine if Christians on this coast were respected by our wider sunshine coast community because of the remarkable and practical ways we loved and cared for each other…
This is a glimpse of what it looks like when it becomes “on earth as it is in heaven”. Will you join me in praying that we will see more of this in our time?
Reflection Questions
Find Yourself
Look at the five stages: longing, refining, empty, drenched, overflow. Which one most describes where you are right now? And which do you sense your church is in?In the Fire
If you're in a hard season, look carefully beneath the difficulty. Is there a growing hunger for Jesus, a deeper longing for things to change? That growth, however small, is the real gift of the refinery.Making Room
What clutter might God be working to clear out, in you or in your church, to make room for what comes next?His Presence
When did you last sense the Holy Spirit's presence tangibly, in your own life or in a gathering? Are you hungry for more of that?Imagine This
If the churches on this coast were truly drenched and overflowing, what would change here? And what might God be asking you personally to say yes to?
