His Love Purifies
Elisabeth Elliot ~ “Love is not merely a gentle touch or a pat on the head. It is a refiner’s fire. It burns to purify.” Reminds me of the verse in Mark 9:49 which says, “For everyone will be salted with fire.” Neither of those sound like a lot of fun! Fire can purify. It burns away what is useless to bring out something better. But love “burns to purify?” The Bible teaches us that God is love. If God is love, then is it His love that does the purifying? Hebrews 12:29(ESV) says, “for our God is a consuming fire.” And in Malachi 3:2-3(ESV), “…For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap…” I found this definition for “fuller’s soap”. “Fuller's soap was a powerful, highly alkaline cleaning agent used in ancient times to scour, cleanse, and whiten raw wool or woven cloth before it was dyed”. God’s love is like “fuller’s soap, scrubbing away what is unnecessary within us. Like deep cleaning for the soul and perhaps the h...