For a little over a month now, I feel as though the Lord has placed me in a fiery furnace of testing & trials. I feel that the heat has been cranked way up and I am trapped with no escape. There for a few days I was beginning to think that this was getting too rough, I am not sure I can go on. I was feeling like a failure because I was allowing things to get to me very easily.
The Lord has really showed me a lot. I see now that everything man does or everything man says is nothing but vanity. The only things that will account for anything in this life is what we do for Jesus. Nothing else matters. The bible says in Isaiah 64:6 "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf;...." This bible verse speaks volumes. Man is so frail and anything that we do outside of God is nothing but vanity. If we are not saying or doing something that will uplift, encourage, exhort, magnify, and glorify God, then it does not matter. Our best efforts are nothing but dust in the wind.
I had a dream a while back about a package that arrived to my dad and me. Inside the package was a blank, white sheet of paper, a book, & a white blanket. On the blanket was writing. Some of the writing I couldn't read but in the bottom right hand corner of the blanket it was addressed to me. It said:
"Angie,
Can a good man goeth to heaven?
Can the grass or flowers liveth forever?"
Of course, the answer to both questions is no. I think this was the beginning of God showing me that man is nothing in himself. It takes God in everything we do. We cannot go to heaven just because we are "good". Even on our best day we are never really good. The only good thing within us is the Lord. And that is the only way any man can get to heaven is through Jesus Christ. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, & the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6) It takes us coming to the realization that we have all have sinned. There is no way of getting out of it. We all have sinned & fallen short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23) The time we have on this earth is short. Man will not live forever except that he be born again of the water & the spirit (John 3:5). Once we are born of the water & the spirit we then can enter the kingdom of God through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the work He has done on Calvary.
The Lord has been "uprooting" things in my heart that I didn't even know were there. When the Lord goes through this process of digging out all the deep roots of fleshly things in our lives, it hurts severely. I tell you first hand it is very painful & you just wish it would already be over. I was to the point that I was feeling like I was going crazy. I was all emotional & touchy. I had no idea right away what I was going through. I noticed too that the Lord took down His "hedge" that He had put up around me. But there was a reason & a purpose for it. He allowed it to uncover things that were still inside me that needed to be taken out. If we want to truly be used of the Lord we have to have all lust & desires of the flesh totally emptied out of us. The Bible says in James 3:11 "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water & bitter?" If we truly want to be sold out to God & have His perfect will in our lives we must completely die out to flesh. Not that we won't still make mistakes but ultimately the love of God will reign within us. We won't have outburst of anger, jealousy, hatred, envying, strife or any other fleshly action.
I truly do want everything that is inside me to be "uprooted" and "cast into the flame" to be burnt up forever more. In the beginning I was questioning the Lord. I was saying "Why me God?" But He reminded me that I said that I loved Him and I wanted to be used by Him in a great way. When you talk to the Lord be sure to watch what you say. Cause you will get everything you ask for. There is pain in the offering that we bring. If there was no pain, there would be no offering.
"But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10) I now see that I should be thankful that I am accounted worthy to be tried in the fire. This means that the Lord is working on me & that He is going to use me. It is a painful process & it seems very lonely too. However, even though I feel lonely, I know that my feelings can lead me astray, I know that my Lord & my Best Friend is always there in my time of need. Just like the 3 Hebrew boys, although their faith was being tested, Jesus was right in the furnace with them. Today He is in the same furnace of trials & afflictions with us.
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