“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” (Psalm 119:67)
Introduction: The Altar of Apparent Adversity
Let me tell you something today, my beloved brother, my beautiful sister in Christ. There is a furnace I have come to love. Not the furnace that melts gold, I am no metallurgist. Not the furnace of a power station we have had enough darkness in this country, praise God the lights have stayed on for over a year now. No, I speak of a furnace far more ancient and far more necessary: the Furnace of Affliction. The obstacle is not the barrier, no. Say it with me: The obstacle is the doorway.
You see, I live in Akasia, north of Pretoria. Every morning, when I step onto my stoep and look toward the Magaliesberg, I remember that the mountain did not become a monument by being comfortable. It was pushed up from the depths by fire and pressure. And you, child of God, are no different. The Scripture declares unequivocally: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” Your bankruptcy will teach you an economy that no wealthy man will ever learn in a lifetime of comfort. Your rejection will grow a thicker skin than any applause could ever produce. What Christ conquers, He cleanses. What God bruises, He builds.
Personal Testimony: When the Forge Caught Fire
Let me take you back. I remember a season, not too many years ago, when my own forge was white-hot. I had just started a small community initiative here in Akasia a feeding scheme for the children in our dusty streets, a little Bible study in my garage. I was full of passion, full of plans. But I was also full of pride. I went astray, not necessarily into great sin, but into great self-reliance. I started to believe that I was the engine of this ministry. I kept the word of God in my back pocket, but I was driving the car myself. The affliction came not as a flood, but as a drought. Donations dried up. Attendance scattered. My own health staggered. And I remember one dark night, sitting in the dark literally, load-shedding was still a plague in those days and I heard the Lord whisper to my spirit: “Before you were afflicted, you went astray. Now, will you keep My word?”
Have you been there? Of course you have. We all have. That is the human experience, baptized by the Holy Spirit into the profound truth of our dependence. The obstacle is the doorway.
South African Reality: The Forge in Our Streets
Let’s bring this home. Turn on the news. The third quarter crime statistics for the 2025/2026 fiscal year recorded 6,381 murders in just three months. That is not a statistic that is a funeral every few hours. Rape and carjackings dropped slightly, but the EFF rightly notes that crime cannot be divorced from structural economic conditions. And the economy? The unemployment rate has risen to 32.7% that is 8.1 million South Africans without work. Nearly one out of every two economically active South Africans is either unemployed or has given up looking for work. The expanded unemployment rate has climbed to 43.7%. The IMF has slashed our 2026 GDP growth forecast to just 1%.
The cost of survival has outpaced general inflation. Electricity prices rose about 85% between 2020 and early 2026, water about 68%. A family of four on the minimum wage spends R1,680 on taxis and R1,181 on electricity before buying a single piece of bread. Millions of households are pushed deeper into poverty every single day. The political landscape is unstable Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, now the third-largest in the country, is tearing itself apart from within with firings, breakaways, purges and all manner of political skulduggery.
Brothers and sisters, we are living in the forge. The question is not whether we are afflicted. The question is what we become in the affliction.
Theological Deep Dive: The Paradox of Pain
Let us define our terms clearly. What is “affliction” in the biblical sense? The Hebrew word appears nearly eighty times in the Old Testament. It is not a headache. It is not being late for work. The psalmist uses it in verse 107: “I am afflicted much, preserve my life, O Lord.” It is a problem you cannot solve by yourself. It is the backbreaking slave-labor of Israel in Egypt. It is Job losing his children, his health, his dignity. It is Joseph in an Egyptian prison, forgotten by those he helped. It is Paul with a thorn in the flesh that he begged the Lord three times to remove.
Now, a common objection surfaces: “But Harold, are you saying God causes all this suffering? Is God the author of evil?” Absolutely not. The Scripture unequivocally affirms that sin entered the world through Adam’s disobedience, and with sin came death, decay, and affliction. Yet the same Scripture also declares that God is sovereign over suffering without being the author of it. The argument can be formulated thus:
1. God is perfectly good and sovereign over all things (Psalm 100:5; Daniel 4:35).
2. Suffering exists in the world (Job 14:1; John 16:33).
3. God uses suffering to accomplish His good purposes—including our sanctification, His glory, and the display of His grace (Romans 8:28; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
4. Therefore, suffering is not incompatible with God’s goodness; rather, goodness is validated and magnified through affliction because it restores the relationship between creature and Creator.
The Christian is not a Stoic. We do not pretend the fire does not burn. The Christian is a metallurgist’s apprentice we understand why the fire burns. As Job confessed after losing everything: “But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). Job suffered the furnace, but he did not worship the furnace. He worshiped the Refiner.
Prophetic Confrontation: The Prosperity Gospel Is a Poisoned Well
Let me sound the alarm against a great error that has crept into our churches, from Soweto to Sandton, from Khayelitsha to KwaMashu. There is a teaching that says: “If you have enough faith, you will never suffer. Affliction is a curse. God wants you rich, healthy, and happy all the time.” I tell you plainly: that is a lie from the pit of hell.
Do you know who never experienced affliction? No one in the Bible except the wicked. Abraham suffered waiting for Isaac. Joseph suffered thirteen years in slavery and prison. David suffered fleeing from Saul. Jeremiah suffered the cistern. John the Baptist suffered beheading. And the Lord Jesus Christ—the sinless, spotless Lamb of God suffered more than any of us can imagine. Gethsemane. The scourging. The thorns. The nails. The thirst. The cry: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
If the sinless Son of God was not exempt from the forge, what makes you think you will be? The prosperity gospel does not prepare you for reality it prepares you for disappointment. It turns faith into a transaction, prayer into a vending machine, and God into a cosmic butler. True liberation is found only in submitting to God’s purposes, including the purposes He achieves through our pain.
I was afflicted. I went astray. The affliction brought me back to His word. That is the testimony. Not that the affliction did not happen, but that God used it.
Actionable Wisdom: Your Personal Trainer
When life slams a door, do not stand there cursing the wood. Look for the window. Every “no” is a disguised “not yet” or “not that.” I challenge you today: write down your biggest current problem. Go on, write it down. Now, list three skills that problem is forcing you to develop. Patience. Creativity. Persistence. Humility. The problem is your personal trainer. It hurts because it is working. Thank it. Then press forward.
What you do daily determines what you become permanently. Your response to affliction today shapes your character for eternity. Are you bitter, or are you better? Are you broken, or are you built? The fire does not ask permission it asks a question: “What are you made of?”
The psalmist did not say, “I was afflicted, and therefore I blamed God.” He did not say, “I was afflicted, and therefore I left the faith.” He said: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” The affliction was the schoolmaster that drove him back to the Teacher.
Intellectual Confidence: Reason Itself Supports This
Contemporary resilience studies I am speaking as a man who reads, not just as a man who believes have confirmed what the Bible has declared for three thousand years. Research from Columbia University has confirmed that adversity strengthens moral resolve and empathy, echoing the biblical link between affliction and character. Neuroplastic research shows that stress-induced learning forms lasting neural pathways an observable counterpart to “learning statutes”.
Do you want scientific evidence? Look at Boethius. The Roman scholar, imprisoned and condemned to death, wrote his masterwork The Consolation of Philosophy not in a library, not in a palace, but in a prison cell awaiting execution. The deepest wisdom does not come from comfort. It comes from the crucible. The greatest hymns were not written in boardrooms. “Amazing Grace” came from a slave trader who met the Living God in a storm. “It Is Well With My Soul” came from a man who lost all four of his daughters in a shipwreck. The forge produces the finest faith.
Pastoral Application: Practical Steps Through the Furnace
What do you do when you are in the middle of the fire?
First, repent of self-reliance. The first word of Psalm 119:67 is “Before.” Before the affliction, I thought I knew the way. The affliction humbled me. If you are suffering today, ask the Holy Spirit: “Lord, where have I gone astray? What is this fire purifying in me?”
Second, return to the Word. The psalmist says: “but now I keep Your word.” Affliction without the Word is just pain. Affliction with the Word is purification. You cannot keep what you do not know. Open your Bible. Read Psalm 119. Read Romans 5, where Paul says: “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). Do you see the chain? Suffering → perseverance → character → hope.
Third, rejoice in the Refiner. Do not rejoice for the pain; rejoice in the God who is using it. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3). Joy is not pretending the fire does not hurt. Joy is knowing who holds the tongs.
Fourth, reach out to others. You are not alone in this forge. 32.7% unemployment means eight million South Africans know your struggle. 6,381 murders in three months means thousands of families are grieving. You are part of a great fellowship of suffering. The early church grew most rapidly not in times of comfort, but in times of persecution. The fire does not destroy the church; it refines it and reveals who truly belongs to Christ.
The Harrowing Reminder: Jesus Christ Has Been There
Picture this. The Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, the One through whom all things were made—hung on a Roman cross. Nails through His hands and feet. A crown of thorns pressed into His scalp. His own people mocking Him. His closest friends fleeing. And in that deepest darkness, He cried out: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Jesus Christ knows the forge from the inside. He did not watch suffering from a distance. He endured it. He experienced it. He conquered it. And because He conquered it, He can cleanse it. What God bruises, He builds. What Christ touches, He transforms.
Your suffering is not meaningless. It has been baptized into the suffering of Christ. Your tears are not unseen. They are collected in bottles before the throne. Your pain is not wasted. It is the fire preparing you for glory.
Call to Action: Press Forward, Not Back
So today, I challenge you. Do not curse the obstacle. Do not run from the doorway. Do not pray for the removal of the fire pray for the courage to be refined in it. Press forward.
Your biggest problem is your greatest pulpit. When you emerge from this furnace—and you will emerge, because Christ has already gone through death and come out the other side—you will have a testimony. And your testimony will be: “Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now? Now I keep His word. ”
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Refiner and the Friend of sinners. You were afflicted for my sake, bruised for my iniquities, crushed for my transgressions. Strengthen my back for the burden, O God. Turn my battlefield into my sanctuary. When the fire burns hot, remind me that You are holding the tongs. When the darkness descends, remind me that You are the Light of the World. I repent of my self-reliance. I return to Your Word. I rejoice in the Refiner, not the fire. Turn my biggest problem into my greatest pulpit. For Your glory, for my good, and for the sake of Your name. Amen.
Harold’s Final Wisdom
The obstacle is the doorway. The affliction is the altar. The wound is the witness. What breaks you can bless you if you let the Breaker be the Builder.
You will never become strong until you stop fearing the fire. You will never possess peace until you stop fleeing the pain. Attack is the proof that your enemy anticipates your success and your enemy knows that the forge of faith produces warriors, not worriers.
*God loves you because of who you are, His child. But He blesses you because of what you become in the furnace. Press forward, Akasia. Press forward, Pretoria. Press forward, South Africa. The forge is hot. But the gold is coming.
Comments
Post a Comment