Less is More

The process of purifying silver requires many steps, but it must be heated to 1,760 degrees. 

Removing the impurities and all the dross is a process, but the less you do, the better it becomes.  

The purifying process is not as complicated as some may believe.  

This is the case where less is more comes into play. 

First you heat it up (Calcining) to the proper degree.  

Then you (Roast) it, which changes the composition of the silver, turning it from its sulfide property, to its native one. 

 

Sounds more than less, but bear with this analogy. 

 

Fusion melting is next. Which you melt the silver with lead to “alloy” it.  

Then the Cupellation process separating the silver from all the base metals. 

Finally, the “Miller process” which is primarily for Gold, not silver. 

 

Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let us look at the spiritual side of all this purification. 

 

When we purchase a product made of silver, we want it to be as pure and polished as possible.   We demand quality in the silver we purchase but seldom apply the same standard to a far more important part of our lives.  

 Our hearts. 

 This “feel-good” society we live in, demands we feel good all the time to succeed.  In the church sometimes, the preacher or pastor, tries to produce truth regarding God’s Word.  

 Some of the feel-good messages never point to the problem.  

 Sin. 

They try to keep everything positive in the church.  

I do not see this in Scripture. 

2nd Timothy 4: 2-5 declares…

“Preach the Word!  Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, (the congregation members and visitors) rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, (lusts) because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.  But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

 

Paul is “charging” the church. 

 

I know this may seem negative to you, but if you are in a church, or part of a church, or “the” church, then please read on.  

 

Being the church is far greater than attending. 

 

Go out into the world and preach the Gospel and make disciples of men. 

Your attendance in the church building is important from the standpoint of learning, growing, and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. 

 

At some point, once we are fed, and then fed up with just listening and not doing, we will launch ourselves out into this dross- filled world and do something with our Christianity.  

 

Look for places where we can purify others as we purify our own hearts. 

 

As smelting removes the impurities in silver, the correction and rebuke, with patience and love, removes the impurities in our hearts. 

 “I will turn My hand against you, and thoroughly purge away your dross, and take away all your alloy.  I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning.  Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.”

Isaiah 1: 25

From the fire of purging to faith that moves mountains.  

Purified, cleansed, and made to shine in the face of death and destruction.

“God is the Light, and in Him is no darkness.”

1st John 1: 5

God is taking away from us, so we can be more.  

Less dross, more God.  

Less is more. 

 

A look into the mirror of life. 

As a former drug- addicted young man, I was full of dross, and there was no light or shining “anything” in my heart and mind. 

It took prison to hone me, shape me, and kill off my will.  

 

It also took a willingness on my part to change, but I was not willing until I was broken.

 

I was broken mentally, physically, and emotionally, while living in constant fear in a maximum-security prison.  Death and destruction were all around me, and I did not succumb to the games these violent men around me did. 

I hated myself, and them, for the insanity and torture they perpetrated on the weak fish in the pond. 

It took absolute heating up of my soul and will to boil away my sin. 

 

God did it.  

The pain of prison prepared me to be heated up past my own 1,760 degrees.  

I had to come to the silversmith’s heat-treating process to have any purity in me at all.  

Boiling hurts.  

It is more than hot, when you realize that my pain then, some 47 years ago now, would eventually bring gain to some soul in a prison that I get the privilege to preach to. 

It is like the potter's wheel in Jeremiah.  

The hand of God had to squeeze out my sin from me because I held on to it in my own death grip of rebellion and free will.  

Not free after I was purged by the Most High. 

 

It is like a “look into a mirror.” 

 

A little girl at age 8, looks at herself and sees herself as Cinderella sleeping beauty.  

By age 15, she sees Cinderella sleeping.  

Sleeping in her doubts as a want-to-be cheerleader.  

She cries out to her mom, “I can’t go to school to the try-outs because i am fat and have pimples today.  I feel too ugly, Mom.” 

 

At age 20, looks at herself and sees “too fat or too thin, too short or too tall.”  

Her hair is either too short, or too long, or too curly or too straight.  But she goes on into the world anyway. 

 

Now, at age 40, she sees that she is getting older now and reminds herself that of all the people who can’t go out into the world at all.  It is because of their own personal shame and guilt that makes them feel ugly in their mirror at home. 

 

By age 50, she has forgotten the Cinderella years and says, “What the heck, I will go anywhere I want to.  I do not care what people think of me.  I look the way I look, and I feel the way I feel, and I will be happy no matter what the world throws at me.”

 

By age 70, she looks into the same mirror she kept all these years, and sees wisdom, laughter, and ability.  She sees her worth in herself, and for the church, and mostly her self-esteem is in the Lord Jesus Christ.  

 

Can’t lose there. 

 

By age 80, she stops looking into the mirror at all.  She puts on a red hat and goes out to shop.

“Who cares?” 

When God turns up the heat in our lives, it is not to hurt us, but to help us.  Help us be more like Him.  The hands, feet and voice of Jesus.  No more, no less.  

 

Better put is, LESS is MORE. 

 

Go on, Little Girl, and dream of the silver slipper you need.  

Run on, Little Joey, and reach the National Football League with your abilities to run fast.  

Pump that iron and do those 100 sit-ups daily, Mr. Convict, in prison.  

Your outward man will get stronger, and you will look more intimidating to the other psychos around you. 

 

It would be better to build up your faith in Jesus and cut loose the iron pile.  

 

Fixing the body does nothing for the spirit.  

 

Read His Word.  

Take correction when needed.  

Dish it out too in love.  

Do not forget the love factor.  

Be the light amid a dark world.  

The Light of Christ. 

 

If less is more, then I would rather decrease in all areas of my life and allow the Holy Spirit to increase in me and through me.  

This is truly, “Less is More.”   

Let us all begin by emptying our spiritual vessels.  That is a lot less arduous than the 1,760 degrees of purging.  

Both will come in time.  Learn to embrace them both. 

 

Silver. 

Dorothy had ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz.   Silver slippers were going to be used, but with the new “technicolor” advances in film, they changed them to Ruby, to stand out on movie theaters’ silver screens, as well as our new color televisions sets at home. 

All Dorothy wanted was to go home.  

There is no place like home.  There is no place like home. 

 

There is more at home with Jesus, than in the world.  

 

The world offers less than His More. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins