Being Refined by the Lord this Lent – Lent 2026

Summary

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Lent calls us into refinement rather than comfort. In this session, Pete Burak leads a Lectio Divina on Sirach 2:1–11 and reveals how God uses trial to purify and strengthen those who serve Him.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, and do not be impetuous in time of adversity. Cling to him, do not leave him, that you may prosper in your last days…”

Sirach 2:1-3

1. What word or phrase stands out to you in the reading? What do you think the Lord is trying to tell you through these words?

2 .Do you believe that you are Gold in need of refinement? Do you run away from the “furnace” that can accomplish this task? How might God be inviting you to stay in that purifying fire right now?

3. Do you believe that God is a good and trustworthy father? What are the ways in which you are not “fearing the Lord”?

4. What are the things in your life that you cleave to rather than God? How might you turn your heart back more fully to Him this Lent?

Text: Being Refined by the Lord this Lent

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Hi, I am Pete Burak. Let’s pray.

Opening Prayer

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your faithfulness. We thank you that you call us into a relationship with you and that you walk with us every step of the way. Lord, we thank you for the joys of life. We thank you for the struggles of life, and we thank you for the great gift to be made in the image and likeness of God, designed to be in harmony with you, redeemed by your blood, drawn into your heart, and destined for a eternal experience of glory. Thank you Lord, for all that you’ve done and all that you do. Amen. Amen

Everyone Is Invited to Read God’s Word

All right, so we are going to do a little journey of Lectio Divina, which is an ancient prayer of the church or a system of the church for diving in a particular way into sacred Scripture and pulling out whatever it is that the Holy Spirit has for us in this moment. And so I’m going to be in on this journey with you, like I have some sense of what the Lord might want to do ’cause I did pray and I did prepare.

But also part of the, the joy and the fun of Lectio Divina, is you enter into the Scripture with an open-minded, open heart to say, Lord, what are you saying to us in this time? And I just want to say one thing about whenever we open the word of God, remember this is divinely inspired. This is God’s word. We believe it. It’s true. And it’s a word that is accessible to us. Like sometimes I think people don’t read Scripture because they’re intimidated by it. Like, I’m not going to be able to understand it, or I don’t have an advanced degree. How could it possibly be pertinent to my life? Because it’s just going to be too dense and too hard to understand. And if you approach it that way, it probably will be.

If you think about this as a book that I can’t really get anything from, then A, you’re probably not going to read it, and B, when you do read it, you’re probably not going to get much from it. But if we go into it with faith that these are words that God wants us to read, God wants us to understand, God wants us to be transformed by this book. If we go into it with expectation that not only will the Holy Spirit speak to us, but He will give us the ability to understand Him and to be transformed by it. Doesn’t mean we don’t still do research. It doesn’t mean it’s not still good to study and hear how, you know, other really wise people have said about these words. But everybody, everybody is invited to chew on, to meditate and to live in God’s word.

So it’s just a tremendous opportunity in the midst of this retreat to pause and just say, for the next few minutes, we’re just going to sit in God’s word. Or as Isaiah says, who is the man to whom I look, he who humbles himself and trembles at my word.

So part of Lectio Divina is to tremble at the word of God, not out of survival fear, but out of a loving acknowledgement that I need to be fed, I need to be transformed. I need to be changed by the truth that is found here, that the Lord passes onto us. Okay, so today we’re going to dive into a passage that I’m sure you’ve read many times is from the Book of Sirach. That’s a joke. Many people have never read Sirach. In fact, I was given a talk one time and I said that and somebody in the front row leaned over to their friend and they said, is that in the Bible? I was like, yes, it’s actually, it’s in your Bible too.

Sirach 2:1-11

So this is from Sirach chapter 2:1-11. And what we’re going to do in the typical Lectio Divina form as I’m going to read the passage three times slowly. So three times, I know this is a challenge, you’re going to have to put your listening ears on. I’ve got five young children, we talk about that all the time. Like put your listening ears on, try not to be distracted. Put your phone away. If you’re watching on your computer, don’t let a popup show up. Don’t be tempted to go check a score or social media, just pause and just receive the word the first few times and then if you want to read it with me, you can.

But try to just actually just receive the word as it is proclaimed before you dive into the nuance, before you try to pull something out. And each time I read it, we’re going to go a little deeper in asking the Lord to highlight. Lord, what do you want us to pull from it? Okay, so this is Sirach chapter 2:1-11.

“My child, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation. Set your heart right and be steadfast and do not be hasty in time of calamity.

Cleave to him, and do not depart that you may be honored at the end of your life. Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient.

For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable man in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in Him and he will help you, make your way straight and hope in him. You who fear the Lord wait for his mercy, and turn not aside lest you fall.

You who fear the Lord, trust in Him, and your reward will not fail. You who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for everlasting joy and mercy. Consider the ancient generations and see, who ever trusted in the Lord and was put to shame?

Or whoever persevered in the fear of the Lord and was forsaken? Or whoever called upon him and was overlooked? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful. He forgives sins and saves in time of affliction.”

“My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation. Set your heart right and be steadfast and do not be hasty in time of calamity. Cleave to him and do not depart that you may be honored at the end of your life.

Accept whatever is brought upon you and in changes that humble you, be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in Him and he will help you, make your way straight and hope in him.

You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy, and turn not aside lest you fall. You who fear the Lord, trust in him, and your reward will not fail. You who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for everlasting joy and mercy. Consider the ancient generations and see, whoever trusted in the Lord and was put to shame?

Or whoever persevered in the fear of the Lord and was forsaken? Or whoever looked upon him and was overlooked? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful. He forgives sins and saves us in time of affliction.”

Okay, at the last time. If you want to read along you can or just continue to listen. I recognize the first time I read it, I said my child and the second time, my son, it’s same translation, same thing.

“My child, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation. Set your heart right and be steadfast and do not be hasty and time of calamity.

Cleave to him, and do not depart, that you may be honored at the end of your life. Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient.

For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in Him, and He will help you, make your way straight in hope in him. You who fear the Lord wait for his mercy, and turn not aside lest you fall. You who fear the Lord, trust in him, and your reward will not fail.

You who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for everlasting joy and mercy. Consider the ancient generations and see, whoever trusted in the Lord and was put to shame? Whoever persevered in the fear of the Lord and was forsaken?

Or whoever called upon him and was overlooked? The Lord is compassionate and merciful. He forgives sins and saves in times of affliction.”

If you’re feeling so moved and the Holy Spirit’s working on your heart and there’s a particular passage or phrase in what I just read that’s stirring in your soul. You can go ahead and pause right now and just sit in that and meditate on it. You don’t need me to walk you through this. So if you need to just pause the video, take your prayer time and meditate on whatever it is that’s being drawn out of the Scripture right now.

But if you don’t want to pause or you want to come back to this, I’d just like to offer three things that jumped out to me as I read this passage and as I prepared for this reflection with you.

Suffering is Inevitable

The first one is that suffering is inevitable. “My son or daughter, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation.” Or another translation would be “prepare yourself for a trial.” And then it just goes into, “set your heart right and be steadfast and not be hasty in time of calamity. Cleave to him that you did opt a part and you’d be honored at the end of your life,” okay. But this one, this is the part that just really grabs you, doesn’t it? “Accept whatever is brought upon you and in changes that humble you be patient.”

Man, is that difficult? To be patient in times when there’s change, especially times of change that humble you. And then this brutal line. “For gold is tested in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. The furnace of humiliation.” Sign me up. That sounds great, doesn’t it? Ugh. No, that sounds awful. Who would ever be like, you know what I really love? I love being humiliated. I love times where I’m just, ugh. So of course we don’t want that, but it’s inevitable.

Because one of the things I’ve learned about humanity is that we are incredibly adept at creating furnaces of humiliation for ourselves or creating a furnace of humiliation for someone else. It’s not a question of if you will suffer, it’s more of a question of when. And chances are all of us who are watching this have suffered, are probably suffering in some way right now and will definitely suffer moving forward.

And so the question is, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, how are we to understand suffering? How are we to lean into suffering? And one of the other videos in this retreat from myself is all about suffering and the redemptive work of suffering. So I’m not going to do a whole teaching on suffering right now, but in this moment, my encouragement to you from this passage is to remember two things about suffering.

One is don’t be afraid to stay in the furnace. Don’t be afraid to sit in the fires that purify us. Don’t be afraid that when we find ourselves in this furnace on humiliation, this time of suffering, certainly we want to ask the Lord’s opinion about it. And certainly we want to course we want to align our will to His will. In whatever his plan is to redeem our suffering, we want to unite ourselves to it. But very often the posture that we should take is to not just immediately bolt from the furnace, but to stay in it, to stay in the fire so that the Lord could do the work that He wants to do in us.

Because remember, every furnace is reminding you or has the potential to remind you that you are gold. You put garbage in the fire to destroy it. You put gold in a fire to make it more pure, make it more what it truly is. So every suffering has the possibility, the potential to remind us that we are gold and need of refinement. The Lord is not done with this yet. He is burning away. He’s utilizing things that even, you know, that are kind of beyond our comprehension that even might be considered horrible and evil, right?

But what does Scripture tell us? That the Lord works for good for all things, for those who believe in Him. Everything has the potential to help you be more pure. If we align ourselves to Him, we cooperate with Him, we honor Him and we obey Him.

You Are Gold

So reminder number one is suffering is inevitable. But I’ve already kind of started to share the second reminder. And the second reminder is that you are gold. That is how God sees you. You are gold certainly in need of refinement, but you are gold, you’re not garbage. You know, Saint Therese used to delight when she would discover new and fresh sins that the Lord needed to heal her of.

Not because she wanted to sin. Far from it, it was the exact opposite. She wanted to be as pure as possible. But what she would say is like, oh good, God’s not done with me yet. My good Father isn’t done purifying me. Here’s a new revelation of something more that he wants to do in me. And so the way we can sit in that fire and accept that fire is in that next line, trust in Him and He will help you make your way straight and hope in Him.

One of the ways we’re able to be, to remember that we are gold and to allow the fire to transform us is to hope, which is hope is that confident assurance that what is coming will be fulfilled, that God’s promises are true. Faith says, I know who He is and I believe who He is. Hope says, and now I can trust in what He says about me and about where I’m going and what I’m made for, He will fulfill that God is trustworthy.

God is Trustworthy and Good

And this is the third reminder that the rest of this passage reminds us is that God is trustworthy and that God is good. We have a good and trustworthy Father. I mean these final verses of this passage, you who fear the Lord wait for His mercy. And remember when we say fear of the Lord, fear the Lord is such a misunderstood thing these days. It’s not servile fear, it’s not I’m afraid of God. Fear of the Lord, what the Scripture tells us, is the beginning of wisdom. It’s the acknowledgement. It’s the recognition of who He is and who we are. The reason fear of the Lord is so important is without the fear of the Lord, very often we can actually find ourselves on the throne of our hearts instead of Him. Without fear of the Lord, we can think, actually, I am capable of healing myself. I am capable of purifying myself.

Look how strong or confident or gifted I am. Fear of the Lord in humility go hand in hand, it’s acknowledgement, it’s an understanding. It’s an actual gift to be able to see who God is in his fullness and to be not afraid of Him and back away, but be drawn to Him in the acknowledgement of, I need you. I’m in awe of you. I worship you, because without you, I can do nothing with you.

Say, Paul tells us, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, but without you, I can do nothing. I have no hope. I have no future. I have no joy. I have no freedom without you, Lord. And the fear of the Lord is that that great gift of the spirit to be able to acknowledge that and to recognize who God is and who we are and how much we need him.

And so listen to what happens when we live in that holy loving fear of the Lord. You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy and turn not aside, lest you fall. You who fear the Lord, trust in Him and your reward will not fall, excuse me, will not fail. You who fear the Lord, hope for good things for everlasting joy and mercy. That sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

We just last year came through a jubilee of hope. And what Sirach is reminding us is that the fulfillment of that hope, the fulfillment of that desire is tied to fear of the Lord, which then leads us to wisdom, which what is wisdom? Wisdom is knowing the mind of God, seeing things the way God sees them. And when we see things, the way God sees things, we are then able to obey Him and to align our will with His. And when we align our will with His, when we become intimately connected with Him, both in terms of our heart, our minds, our desires, our actions, when we are unified with the Lord, what does that lead to? Everlasting joy and mercy. Rewards that do not fail. I mean, this is whoever trusted the Lord when was put to shame. Whoever called upon Him and was overlooked for the Lord is compassionate and merciful, He forgives sins and saves in times of affliction.

So you see that the journey of this passage? When we come forward to serve the Lord, when we say yes to Him, when we give Him our lives, that does not mean we will be removed from all suffering, from all temptation, from all trial. But what Sirach is reminding us is that when we find ourselves in furnaces of humiliation, when find ourselves in deep suffering, to just grasp onto Jesus, to hold onto Jesus, knowing that he is the only way, the only truth, the only life. Knowing that he is the only hope we have, that He is good and compassionate and merciful.

And when we hold onto Him and we, or as Sirach says, when we cleave to Him and do not depart, what happens? We are honored at the end of our life, which is the ultimate purpose of our life here, is to be united with God here on earth so that we might be united with Him for all eternity. That at the end of our lives, we might hear, well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of her master.

Questions During Prayer

So let’s just pray into this for a second. Let’s just sit, maybe read this passage one more time, quietly to yourself and just say, Lord, where are the ways that I’m not fearing you? Where are the ways that I’m the Lord and you are not? Where are the spaces that you’re inviting me to sit in the furnace and I’m rejecting it? Where are the ways that instead of cleaving to you, I’m cleaving to my finances or cleaving to a relationship or cleaving to my influence or cleaving to a political party or cleaving to anything other than you?

Lord, how have I not trusted you? How have I not persevered in my faith? Just ask these questions of the Lord. And remember when Jesus answers these questions, he’s not exasperated, he’s not frustrated, he’s not impatient. He’s lovingly inviting you into more. And any revelation, any sense of the Lord as to what’s going on in your life is a mercy. Is his love point out to us to say, this is who you are. So that, and this is who I am, so that we can have true intimacy with each other. True freedom.

One of my favorite prayers, Lord, let the real me encounter the real you. And a passage like this gives us plenty of space to let the Lord reveal to us who we really are and reveal to us and remind us who he really is so that we might hold onto Him and we might be transformed by Him, and that we may one day walk in the fullness of the life that he has for us here, and the completion of that fullness and his promises for all eternity in heaven.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. Jesus, we need you. Jesus, we adore you, we worship you, we glorify you, and we thank you for the great gift of your word and the great gift of your promises. And we believe Lord Jesus, of who you are and what you’re doing in us. And then we hope confidently that all that you say about what you will do and what you are doing will happen.

Even in the midst of tremendous suffering, Lord, we do not lose hope. We do not despair because you are the Lord of our lives. You’re the Lord of the universe, and we believe in you. We trust you and we love you. Amen.

About Pete Burak

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