I feel as if lately I am being ground to powder. Not powder like dirt but rather something akin to flour. Broken down into rudimentary parts. Dismantled only to be reassembled at some later time in a different form. Flour ground up to later be mixed with water and other ingredients or other people to create something that will fuel and edify a body or the body. Broken down just like a body does to extract the nourishment it needs to not only stay alive but to thrive. Broken into smaller parts so the parts can be sorted out to figure out which ones I don't really need to carry with me. Stripped down and made light. Perhaps to travel light as I may need to move quickly and be agile.
Extra baggage weighs us down. Makes it harder to do what we are called to do. Baggage gives us more things to remember when its time to go. Many things that don't really warrant a second glance I have often dragged along with me in my life. Doubt, guilt, anger, impatience, unwelcome angst and anxieties, etc. Do I still carry these things. Sure do. Not nearly as much of them as I use to. Someday I will truly grasp the fact that the only One that matters has already forgiven me of many of the things I continue to carry guilt about...I should forgive myself. He is the only thing I should be carrying in me anyway. The truth is that it is Him that carries me anyway.
I am being ground down. Like diamond dust. Cut away. Honed. Broken down so that I can serve others as I have been obviously called to do. Ground into a fine grit that can eventually be used to polish others in the same process that has ground away and polished me. Just as the brilliance of a diamond only comes through after repeated chipping away at just the right places and repeated grindings and polishings. The grindings have been done with surgical precision to best optimize the material and waste none of it. The raw material is in short supply and every spec and iota of it that can be used to show the glory and brilliance of its Creator needs to be taken advantage of. God maximizes your value. And like a Master Gem Cutter, God hones me away to remove as many of the flaws as possible.Every aspect of me that glorifies God will be preserved by God to do His will. Anything that does not will be disgarded. This process will continue until all the facets that God wants shown to the world are perfected and spotless. Until the clarity of the gem inside is brought forth for the sparkling briliant light that will shine through it. I am just raw material. A stone or one with a heart of stone that has been made flesh.
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh. ~Ezekiel 11:19
The beauty of it all is not the stone itself but rather the way the light plays and works through the stone that gives it its luster...its beauty. A stone on the diadem of the King.
I am being simplified an in this simplicity I will find my purpose God has set aside for me. Where I can shine most brilliantly for his purpose.
4 comments:
This milling process for me is a wilderness experience like Abraham and Moses but I know the place where Christ wants me to be is only accessible by walking through the this tempering fire. I know He is burning off the impurities to make me suitable for His purposes. I also know that the easiest way to get through to the place where he often wants me to be is to go straight through the scary places that require abundance of faith
what is 'Emergent' & 'Christian Mysticism?'...just wondering what you mean by those...they could mean anything! people CALL themselves that? lol! (this is barbie pauly, by the way, 'artwerx' was my blog before facebook was invented! :)
When I refer to the Emergent Church it is and aspect of the "new" church that says we cannot really know for sure what the Bible meant because we cannot get back inside the heads of the people who wrote what they wrote (intentional fallacy) and they are too far removed historically to figure it out (radical historicism). This is just really poor hermeneutics. And because of this the postmoderns (like Brian Maclaren) instead add mysticism or an element of mystery to the text that doesn't need to be there as the text is quite clear. We sw this in the 1990's with the "Jesus Seminar" and Peter Jennings. They basically made Christ purely a historical figure and removed the element of His deity in their doctrine. You hear it all the time, "Jesus was a really wise teacher". And my response is usually, "yes, He was, because He was God incarnate".
That's why I didn't add it to my profile descrip as it would've been quite long...too long actually :P
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