I shall arise and go down to the Potters house. And there I shall hear the word of the Lord. I shall see a work upon the wheel. And the clay is marred in the hand of the Lord. And the wheel keeps turning. Brothers and sisters, have you put yourself upon the potters wheel? Have you put yourself into His hands? As it seems good to the Potter, will you allow yourself to be remade? Can I suggest the obvious? We are the clay, He is the potter and the turning wheel is life with all its circumstances.
Shall we yield to it all? Shall we allow ourselves to be broken to be remade? Or, shall we cry out to God night and day for a change in our circumstances? Shall we demand that the Lord heal us, that He deliver us, that He, in effect, serve us? If we ask for the wheel to stop turning then we shall cease to grow. When the fire comes, and it shall come, what shall we cry out? If we cry out that “even if our God does not deliver us, we shall never bow down to the gods of this world,” then the wheel keeps turning.
When we are faced with great loss and we cry out “The Lord gives and the lord takes away,blessed be the name of the Lord” then the wheel keeps turning. If we find ourselves in the depths of a dungeon with the skin torn from our backs and we begin to praise the Lord in the midnight hour, then the wheel keeps turning. Whatever is upon the wheel shall be either a vessel for honor or a vessel of dishonor. If the wheel stops turning then whatever exists upon the wheel is the finished vessel.
Jesus told us in Luke 14 that unless we love Him more than father or mother, wife and children, brothers ans sisters then we cannot be His disciples. And in Matt 10:38, in the same context as Luke 14 we see that if one refuses to take up his cross, that one “is not worthy of Me.” Is there a line in your sand? Is there a bridge too far? The day will tell that story. For when that day comes, and is surely comes for all who name His name, what cry shall we hear? “Lord please stop the wheel?” Or shall we hear the cry of the disciple “whatever it takes Lord, blessed be Your name.” For one, the wheel stops and for the other, they go on from glory to glory as they glorify Him. The choice belongs to us.
I awoke this morning (05/17/2024) from a dream about exalting the name of Jesus and I had this line in my spirit “perfect in all your broken pieces,” which prompted the writing of this poem………….
Made perfect in Christ
Perfect in all your broken pieces Perfect in the Blood of Christ alone His perfect love it never ceases As He draws you before His triumphant throne
Jesus, Jesus how I love you so I know you'll never let me go Beneath thy wing I ever stand Safe and secure in the palm of your hand
I'm healed by the Blood that never ceases I'm healed as I wade amidst it's flow And my cry to the heavens surely reaches It cleanses me whiter than the purest snow
I'm perfected by Christ my one Redeemer The one who died for you and for me I'm healed and made whole as I go ever deeper Deeper in Him shall set me free
His perfect love cries out in the darkness It cries out to you right where you are Conquering all sin and death and sadness He is so near who once was so far.
The manifest presence of God is the tangible reality of the Lord in our lives. Too often we simply have fellowship with each other about fellowship. We often just simply talk too much rather than enter in. So many of our services are devoted to talking about the theology of God. We hear teaching after teaching and it takes up 90% of the service.
The sad truth is that we would rather hear about God than hear from God. To hear from God is to shake the very foundations of our comfortable lives. To hear from God is to cry out like Isaiah “I am undone.” The manifest presence of God leaves nothing untouched. The secret garden of our heart is penetrated.
If the garden is good then we are overwhelmed with His goodness. If the garden has weeds, has secrets, secret darkness, then the Light of God shall make it known. This is why our services, for the most part, do not resemble 1 Cor 14 with the gifts of 1 Cor 12 in operation. It would be too “messy.” The “order of service,” would be turned upon its head. The “liturgy,” would fall by the wayside. We would do real business with God and with each other.
Yet, I believe the main reason this is avoided is because most of those sitting in the pews know nothing of the new birth. And, sad to say, so many of them who occupy the pulpit in our day know nothing of the new birth either. One luke warm generation after another has caused the very idea of a 1 Cor 14 church to be an impossibility. One gift after another has been cast out of the service until all we are left with is 20 min of rehearsed professional music, and a regurgitated sermon and a plea for money.
It’s a sad indictment of our age. It’s the tragedy of our age. Yet there are a remnant of God’s people. There are still those who have been born again and know of His glory. Who have been touched and forever changed by His glory. Whose hearts are set on Him. Whose secret places are filled by His light and His glory.
Have most of these Spirit filled saints been chased away from the typical Sunday morning service? Yes indeed. They can find no place in the order of things, so they find themselves, often times, in a lonely place, a wilderness of sorts. And in this wilderness they find that God will meet all of their needs. Their intimacy with Him grows in direct proportion to their direct needs met. And one day soon enough, those whom God has called away unto Himself will come walking out of that desert.
Just as John the Baptist declared from the wilderness “behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world,” the remnant saints will declare “behold, the Son of God is coming in all His glory to judge the living and the dead.” They identify the signs of His coming and the world will mock them. And as each sign becomes increasingly hard to ignore, the world will increasingly hate them.
Yet they will find that this remnant has been individually and uniquely trained in the desert. They have been taught in the ways of endurance. They have walked through trial and flood and our Lord God has taken them through them all, they are overcomers. And now, they shall overcome the last great battle against them by the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of their testimonies of Christ in them, and , because of what the Lord has trained them in the desert, they love not their own lives unto death.
So dear lonely saint, be of good cheer, for the time of the Lord draweth near and let us ever draw near unto Him by entering into the manifest presence, the glory which the Lord Himself has given and revealed to us.
By embracing the possibility of death, this has released within me an abundance of life. Life and that more abundantly flows from the one who dies to himself. We know this. We learn this from the Scriptures. We are schooled by the Holy Spirit to take up our cross and die daily. In the midst of death to self, comes pouring forth life in Christ. There is an ocean that lies within us and in order for it to well up inside of us and come rushing forth like a mighty tsunami, there has to be an earthquake. There has to be a mighty shaking that sweeps away everything that is is not firmly rooted on the solid foundation of Christ my King.What an honor for me to be shaken in such a way that demonstrates to the world the immovable force that lies within me. Christ and Him crucified. The Holy Spirit and the baptism of fire. My Father in heaven who sits upon the throne.
Death may come barreling towards us like a freight train sometimes, but life in Christ falls upon us like a ateroid. Events of such magnitude threatens everything that we know and is the catalyst to change everything we have ever known. For out of death to this world springs forth life. Out of the gross darkness of our circumstances God commands light to shine forth in all its celestial glory. Not just any light, rather light that emenates from the fires of heaven. The same fires that a coal was taken from and touched the lips of Isaiah. In this light everything is on the line. Death where is your sting in the light of Christ my King? Oh grave where is your victory in the glory of His majesty? There is a love vast as the ocean and it dwells inside of me, there is victory over all my flesh for my Lord has set me free. There is a peace that surpasses understanding when to this world we surely die, one day at a time, anxious for nothing, tis our eternal hearts cry.
A Call To The Remnant 