“If you are My child, We will be walking through many different seasons together. You can count on it. There will be overall seasons that orchestrate the coming of My Son. There will also be personal seasons to refine, change, and develop you into the very image of His character. You will become as the perfect, waiting bride because of the work that takes place in you during these seasons.
"The overall seasons began at the time of My creation of your world. Everything has been put in order to bring My creation to the completed salvation process. You are living in the very end of the time before I call all things to be fulfilled. It is then that the season of future eternities will be implemented. You are very much a part of that season also. You will be used as My instruments during that time.
"I need to have you embrace your personal seasons with zeal. Understand that you must go through each personally tailored season, so that you become exactly who I have designed you to be. If your season is particularly difficult, please know that I understand your pain and that I am with you through it. If you are in a season of rest, please know that I love you enough to refresh you before you embrace the next refiner’s fire. Fires bring forth the perfection. They will become increasingly intense because I am about to require much of you. Anyone who is not going through seasons of refinement has long ago been put aside. I love them very much, but they have some time ago halted the deep refining work in their lives. It grieves Me, but I honor that.
"Those of you who feel as if I have lifted My hand from your life, that I am not answering your prayers, that I don’t seem to care - you are very, very wrong. The opposite is true. It is because you have given Me freedom to do what it takes to fulfill My desires in you that you are now in deep training. You have responded to Me as My Son did. I am very pleased with Him and I am very pleased with you. Keep submitting and trusting; I am with you.”
Zech. 13:9 AMP
And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined and will test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will hear and answer them. I will say, It is My people; and they will say, The Lord is my God.
Rom 8:29 AMP
For those whom He foreknew [of whom He was aware and loved beforehand], He also destined from the beginning [foreordaining them] to be molded into the image of His Son [and share inwardly His likeness], that He might become the firstborn among many brethren.
Rev. 3:19 AMP
Those whom I [dearly and tenderly] love, I tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten [I discipline and instruct them]. So be enthusiastic and in earnest and burning with zeal and repent [changing your mind and attitude].
My thumb is wrinkled from sucking on it like a baby during particularly difficult refining times. In seasons of rest, I sometimes forget the object of my life and take my eyes off the goal. I then run back onto the lap of my Lord the minute things return to the “normalcy” of refinement. Sometimes I forget that the reason that I am living is for God’s reasons.
When I remember that I have been bought into a family that has a mandate to love deeper and care more about someone else’s desires than my own, everything becomes clear. My life is not my own. That’s for real.
Having said that, I realize that it’s going to take a lot to bring me to a place of consistently letting go of my own desires. There will have to be difficulties that I can’t overcome, challenges that are bigger than I am; and trials that make me cry out in agony. Why, I’ll have to be hemmed in on all sides at times, so that I can’t move. It will be important to go down some deadend roads, where perils await me. There must also be times when I feel so alone that it’s physically painful, just so that I cry out for help to the One who bought me.
Obviously, the picture is clear. We have only one purpose in this life. It is not our own. It is to submit to whatever influence that the Lord decides will change us and make us more like Jesus. We should even do it joyfully, knowing how much it means to our Lord. The more we squirm, procrastinate, and decide not to submit to His hand of purpose, the more we proclaim own rebellion. We lie and lie and lie, even to ourselves, making believe that our life is of importance in some other way.
Wanting to really admit where my values are placed,
Jim Corbett
