God is faithful

Ever since the Lord spoke to me in a definite way on May 18th through brother CW’s testimony in one of the Fireside Chats, I’ve just been filled with a gratefulness that God has not let me go.

I still remember the first time I heard brother EM read this portion from the Life-Study of Jeremiah & Lamentations — although I can’t remember which training it was in…

We need to realize that in allowing us to have troubles, God is faithful in His purpose to turn us from idols and bring us back to Himself. Our peace, safety, health, and possessions may become idols to us, and God is faithful to take these things away so that we may drink of Him as the fountain of living waters.

Chapter 4

Some things are idols to others and not to me, but the Knower of hearts knows what my idols are. And then He uses them to gain me as He wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

It is through His stripping, consuming, and tearing down that God dispenses Himself into those who love Him and seek after Him.

Memorial Day Conference – Message 1, V.B.4

So He doesn’t change the environment, doesn’t give me what I want, doesn’t make things easier — because He knows that this is His opportunity to work out His economy, to answer my deepest prayer, to honour my consecration. And that’s just it — because I love Him and seek Him, He’s bound to give Himself to me, and certain environments are just more conducive to Him doing that. He may never have another opportunity like this one!

God’s purpose in dealing with His holy people is that they would be emptied of everything and receive only God as their gain…”

V.B.5

“Each blow I suffer / is true gain to me” (hymn 626). He wants me to gain! This is His heart that is good toward me.

For whom the Lord loves He disciplines…

Hebrews 12:6

Yes, these days I feel like the Lord loves me more than He loves many others (which, of course, is not true, since He’s not a respecter of persons). L shared in our Winter Training study group that the more processed something is, the more value it has. My God is not satisfied with me being a “steel rod” or even an “earring” — He’s making me into a “watch movement”.

Job’s sufferings were not God’s judgment but God’s stripping, consuming, and tearing down so that He might have a base and a way to rebuild Job with Himself, to make Job a God-man, a new man in God’s new creation.

V.B.3

The question is, will I let the “all things” (Romans 8:28) — this thing — work for me? The outer man is for sure being consumed, but is the inner man being renewed?

A verse that I noticed in our Bible reading, with a familiar hymn:

…I will thoroughly purge away your dross as with lye,
And I will remove all your alloy.

Isaiah 1:25

…I only design
thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Hymn 339

So it’s not punishment, not neglect, not that He favours others. It’s His mercy, His love, His faithfulness. I’m reminded of one of the verses the Lord gave me for the 4th-term cherishing time:

Indeed, He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Romans 8:32