"Count it All Joy"

We remember last Sundays message. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds." James 1:2
Don't we all love the opportunities God gives us to put our words into practice. It would seem to me that each person has been given such an opportunity this week. Me, in many ways.
This is what I have learned:
How precious is it to have a God who will break you down all for the purpose of the pleasure of HAVING to lean on him. He wants me to know the intimate joys of relationship with him. How amazing is it to have a God who'll place me in situations beyond myself all to see his glorious hand at work. God knows how priceless a relationship with him is... He knows my deepest needs beyond my desires. And if it means God must break my heart to show me more of himself.. Then, enable me Lord, to have my heart broken, and broken, and broken again, all for the sake of knowing you. And making me pliable, useable in your kingdom. What have I learned this week? Christ is the purpose of living and my sufficiency is in Him. Pain brings forth eternal pleasure. Praise God.

"Know ye not that...ye are not your own?" {#1Corinthians 6:19}

There is no such thing as a private life—"a world within the world"—for a man or woman who is brought into fellowship with Jesus Christ’s sufferings. God breaks up the private life of his saints, and makes it a thoroughfare for the world on the one hand and for himself on the other. No human being can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified for ourselves, we are called into the fellowship of the gospel, and things happen which have nothing to do with us, God is getting us into fellowship with himself. Let him have his way, if you do not, instead of being of the slightest use to God in his redemptive work in the world, you will be a hindrance and a clog.

The first thing God does with us is to get us based on rugged reality until we do not care what becomes of us individually as long as he gets his way for the purpose of his redemption. Why should not we go through heartbreaks? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with his Son. Most of us fall and collapse at the first grip of pain; we sit down on the threshold of God’s purpose and die away of self-pity, and all so called Christian sympathy will aid us to our death bed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of his Son, and says—"Enter into fellowship with me; arise and shine." If through a broken heart God can bring his purposes to pass in the world, then thank him for breaking your heart.