TRIALS IN SERVICE TO GOD

TRIALS IN SERVICE TO GOD AND IN OBEDIENCE TO CHRIST

Brother Talley tells a story about the stradivarius violin - that the wood that they made that violin out of - (now I don’t know whether this is true or not) - it certainly fits in with what I am going to say. He said that they took the wood off a tree that had withstood the greatest stress. They took it off the side of the tree that was under the greatest stress because it was that wood that would enable the violin to make the sweetest music. I think that’s true in the life of God’s child. I think it’s the trials, the afflictions that we pass through in our obedience to Christ. I don’t mean to say the trials that we experience because of our sin. But the trials and the conflicts, etc. we experience in our obedience to Christ that enables us also to sing the sweetest music and glorify God. But Walter sent me an email recently about the birth of a butterfly. It described a man watching a butterfly come out of the cocoon and there was just a small opening in that cocoon for the butterfly to come out and he watched the butterly struggle and struggle and struggle to try to get out that narrow opening and it finally just gave up the struggle. Of course what he was doing was resting. But the man was going to help that butterly out of the cocoon and he took a pair of scissors and cut the opening larger so the butterfly could slide out. He said when the butterly slid out that it had a huge body but little spindly wings. He watched the butterly crawl around on the ground and he expected any time for that fluid in the body to spread out into the wings so the butterfly could fly but it never did. There was something about the struggle to come through that small opening that caused the fluid in the body to spread out into the wings that when the butterly came out that it could fly. Well, beloved, it’s the stress and the trials and the difficulties we go though in our service to God that enables us to soar. Many times because of our comprimising, our failing to face those trials (we try to skirt around them) we just kind of scratch around on the ground in the earth. But, beloved, those that have not skirted those difficulties but have passed through them, they’re the ones who have been blessed to soar. I tell you - soar with God. So, although none of us would ever go out and say "bring on the trials, bring on the conflicts, bring on the suffering" yet in the course of our obedience to Christ we’re going to face them. They’re going to come in life but they’re going to be that which God is going to use to make us a vessel of great use to Him. And, what other purpose on earth is there for us than to be a vessel that God would use for His glory.