“I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church.” (Colossians 1:24, NLT)
“The call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us … If we are ever 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 finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter … Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.”
(Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, September 30)
Photo by Maja Petric on Unsplash
Today I am joining … Scripture & a Snapshot and Sunday Scripture Blessings and Selah .
A lifetime of work to stay right with God.
We get it all backwards, don’t we, longing to stay whole, when broken fragments and crushed grapes will feed a multitude.
Tears rolling down my cheeks as God used this post to encourage me to yield and trust Him in this time of crushing.
I am learning the truth of this quote more and more. Dying to the self is hard to do. It does take a lifetime of work.
What an interesting thought – that we need to be ripe AND we need to be squeezed or crushed. God’s perfect timing.
oh i love this quote! pondering it today! thank you for sharing!