Altogether Persuaded

Revive Our Hearts played Joni Eeracson Tada's speech from TrueWoman'08 yesterday on the radio. Yes, I cheated a little. I usually listen, in order, to my podcasts in the morning while I do dishes. But I couldn't help but keep the radio at the station while stuck in a jam on the highway. So glad I did. Here's a part that really stuck out for me:

1 Kings chapter 6. It says there, “In building the temple”—get this—“only blocks dressed at the quarry were used. And no hammer, no chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built” (verse 7).

Do you get that ladies? God wanted the building of that temple to be a picture of preparation for heaven. So God told King Solomon that all the stones for that temple should be chiseled back at the quarry, back at the worksite with the all the trucks and the steam shovels, not near the temple.

That’s a picture of the way God is fitting you for heaven. If you are a member of Christ’s family, you are a living stone being built into a holy temple. This world is God’s worksite. This world is His very noisy, very dusty quarry. We are being mined out of the stone pit of earth. It is a place of noise and hammering and sweat and work and chiseling and pain.

God is using your afflictions to shape you so that you might fit perfectly into heaven’s landscape where there will be no more hammer, no more chisel, nothing that bites or causes pain, no other iron tool, where there is no suffering, only serenity. No pain, no sorrow, no tears, no death.

Isn't that an amazing concept? What else can one say but "hammer away"? Another little quote that I hope I never, ever forget:

Maybe you feel as though someone were taking a gigantic toothbrush and scrubbing your soul raw today, and it hurts. It’s hard. You wince at the pain and the disappointment. I’m with you in that. But let me remind you, you are not as delicate as you think. “For to this you have been called,” it says in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 21, “because Christ suffered for you leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps.”

"For to this you have been called." When you put it that way, and if one truly has faith in God's supreme control, then again, what else can one say but "hammer away"?

Did I ever mention that I like RouH's?? ;)