Brewed for Glory

From Bean to Brew, God’s Refining Work is Slow, Rich, and Worth the Wait | The One Minute Podcast Episode 04

May 12, 2025

The One Minute Podcast EP 04 - The Good, the Bad and the Petty

Did you get the message?

One of the many things I love about God is how He can express Himself in or through anything. One of my favourite sayings is “If you seek Jesus in everything, you will find Jesus in everything.” It’s one of the ways He speaks to me and teaches me. Recently, He showed me a reflection of something in how coffee is made or processed. And I guess it had to be coffee because if you know me well, you’ll know that one of my favourite things to do is cafe hopping. I love seeking out cute, artsy cafes/coffee shops to work from and drinking good coffee while at it.

For someone who lived in the United Kingdom for almost ten years, people always assume that I love tea or that I would prefer tea to coffee. This is understandable because I can’t count the number of times I heard “Would you like a cuppa?” as soon as I stepped foot in someone’s house. Surprisingly, though, tea didn’t stick; coffee did. I’ve always dreamt of having my own cafe, fresh coffee brewing, the smell hanging in the air, bringing people together.

One of the things I love about coffee shops is people watching. Ideally, I’m supposed to be there working (my favourite place to work, I’ll take it over a co-working space any day, any time), but I always end up people watching here and there. And it’s interesting to see the diversity of people that meet up or just come alone. I live in a country where people are enamoured (yes, I know this is a strange word to use concerning coffee) with coffee. Brazilians LOVE coffee. People troop in and out of coffee shops to get a “cafézin” or “cafézinho” = little coffee or coffee shot, and leave without taking anything else. People meet up over ‘cafézinhos’…alone. It’s like a booster for the rest of the day. It’s basically the ‘Would you like a cuppa?’ in England, but coffee instead.

I researched how coffee is made/produced and this is what Google showed me -

The coffee production process, from bean to brew, involves several stages: planting, harvesting, processing, roasting, grinding, and brewing. These steps transform coffee seeds into the flavorful beverage we enjoy.
Detailed Process:
Planting: Coffee "beans" are actually seeds planted in tropical regions.
Harvesting: Ripe coffee cherries are hand-picked or mechanically harvested.
Processing: The cherries are processed to separate the beans from the pulp, often through methods like wet or dry processing.
Roasting: The beans are roasted, changing their color and developing their flavor.
Grinding: Roasted beans are ground to a desired consistency for brewing.
Brewing: Ground coffee is mixed with hot water and filtered, extracting the flavors and aromas.

As I read through each step, I saw how comparable this is to when God takes you through a refining process or processes.

Planting - “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The first and most important thing is being ‘planted in the ground’ and dying. Dying to self.

Harvesting - Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish as food,especially the process of gathering mature crops.

“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. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” We know that when the seed is planted, it’s tested. If you read the parable of the sower, the seed he planted was tested in many ways, such as thorns, rocks, the sun, you name it. But the seeds planted in good soil matured and brought forth fruit. Our good soil is Jesus. After dying to self and maturing and ripening, God will ‘harvest’ you, pick you out.

Processing - This reminds me of ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’. This symbolises judgement day when the Lord will separate the righteous from the wicked, but it’s also a work the Lord will do in us and is always doing in us. He separates the wheat from the chaff.

Roasting/Grinding - In this place, your flavour is being developed and a consistency that is required for how God will use you.

Finally, Brewing - being mixed with trials and temptations, extracting what God has developed inside you. I find it interesting that after this long process, coffee still has to be mixed with hot water for the flavours and aromas developed through the process to come out. One would think the flavours and aromas would naturally exude, and they do, but not as strongly as when it’s mixed with hot water. So even when the Lord has put you through a refining process, it takes ‘hot water’ for everything developed to come out. Read James 1:2-4 again.

If you’re a coffee lover like me, anytime you have a coffee in your hand and drink a delicious coffee, think of the process it went through. If the Lord is taking you through a refining process, imagine how pleasing to the Lord the flavour and aroma that will come from this process will be, if you surrender to it.

This type of process is not unique to coffee alone. Many things we consume today have gone through a refining process to produce the finished products we enjoy.

Prayer:

Lord, may we not despise the refining process. Knowing that the ultimate goal is to become like Christ. May we not abort the process. Give us the grace, strength and trust to allow You to refine us as we walk on this journey to perfection, to You. Help us to surrender daily. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pictures of my favourite cafes so far. Which one is your favourite (based on the pictures, don’t overthink it)?

Cafe 1