Daily Word

When the Lord desires for us to share in His holiness, He deals with us in ways that we do not always enjoy.

You might experience the “decanting” process described in Jeremiah 48:11–12, 29.

Over a period of 40 days, wine was poured from one vessel to another to remove the unpleasant dregs, resulting in a pure, fine-tasting wine.

For instance, you may have to go through a series of difficult relocations or changes—at work, within an organization, or in your church fellowship. You might even be compelled to leave a place where you had finally settled down and felt truly at home.

This often entails significant restructuring. Long-established patterns, ways of doing things, traditions, and the like are broken down, forcing you to re-evaluate and reconsider your mindset, your values—and, at times, even your doctrines and teachings.

In such moments, an unpleasant sediment—consisting of insecurity, a need for control, irritation, and more—tends to rise to the surface, accompanied by a host of negative states of mind, such as cynicism, coldness, and hardness of heart.

God wants to completely restructure and realign you so that you fit into His world and radiate His kindness and goodness to those around you. Is He allowed to do that?

Another 'interesting' experience we also have to go through is the “image crushing”.

The famous English writer C.S. Lewis describes God as "the great iconoclast". He argues that our natural conceptions, theological concepts, and the images we form of God in our minds are not divine—they are limited human constructs and can easily become idols. In order for us to meet God as He really is, He must time and again shatter these images.

"All reality shatters our images" he writes during a period of deep sadness after his beloved wife died of cancer. Through the pain, he realized that God not only shatters our false images of himself, but also our ingrained images of the people we love and spend time with.

These are certainly not easy experiences, but oh so necessary!

So let God have His way even when your whole being is screaming in pain!