I have a good friend who said to me years ago when I was going through a rough time: “Gold is gold before it goes into the fire.”  That gave me a lot of hope, because I sure didn’t feel like gold at the moment!

This selection from Amy Carmichael’s Thou Givest . . . They Gather makes a similar point:

Num 31.23 Everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the fire, and it shall be clean.

Is it not a tremendous comfort that a test of any sort proves that our God knows the soul can stand the test?  Things that could not stand the fire were to be put into water–a much less fierce test of the stuff of which the thing was made.  Our God is as tender with souls as with things.  He will not put us through the fire unless He knows that we can “stand the fire.”