The process of regeneration and sanctification is an ongoing process in our lives, by God. It is often one that causes us much agony as we learn to let go of ourselves and our lives bit by bit, with the help of His Holy Spirit and of course, yet again, His grace. If we are to benefit the Body of Christ in any small way, these things have to take place. There is no short-cut way to reach it.
Do we allow God to bring this about in our lives, or are we like the marble that escapes, mentioned below? If we are like the marble, all we do is prolong both the agony and the blessing that is sure to come afterwards.
Here Oswald Chambers makes it very clear why this is so necessary in our process of dying to self and living in Christ.
THE COMMISSION OF THE CALL
“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake.” Colossians 1:24
We make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we get right with God He brushes all these aside, and rivets us with a pain that is terrific to one thing we never dreamed of, and for one radiant flashing moment we see what He is after, and we say – “Here am I, send me.” This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine.
God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom.
If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine would have been remarkably bitter. To be a sacramental personality means that the elements of the natural life are presenced by God as they are broken providentially in His service.
We have to be adjusted into God before we can be broken bread in His hands. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.
I loved this post, it gave me an idea to post on my site.
God Bless
Tony Cathey
http://www.imablogger.net
Great to hear from you brother! Glad it blessed you. I guess it’s all about being part of His body – Ephesians 4:11-16 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
In Jesus, Jessie