Turn in your Bibles to Romans 8. We will read two verses with which we are familiar: Romans 8:28-29.
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Then turn to Jeremiah 18. These may not be such familiar verses, beginning in verse 1.
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear My words.
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought his work on the wheels.
And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
And then another verse, perhaps not so familiar, is Galatians 4:19. Paul is speaking to the Galatian church:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
So let us have a word of prayer.
Lord, again we thank You for Your Word. We tell You that we cannot live without Your Word. Your words are spirit and life.
And now, Lord, once again, like Peter, we have to say, “Lord, unless You speak, there is nothing.” As he said on that day when You challenged Your disciples and said, “Will ye also go away?” he said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”
So we call upon the name of the Lord. We ask You to open Your Word and unveil Christ to us in a clearer and fuller way, that we would not be the same after hearing Your Word, but that Your Word would register in us and do that work which You desire to do in Your people. For we ask this in Jesus’ precious and worthy name. Amen.
Now, about two months ago—I think it was seven weeks, if my counting is correct, and do not count on that—I began to share a burden from Romans 8:28-29: conformed to the image of His Son. Some of you may remember, maybe remember the start.
In that first part, we were looking at likeness purposed. In other words, the great purpose of God behind everything has to do with the Lord Jesus. Everything about the purpose of God is centered in the Lord Jesus.
Yet, at the same time, in the great purpose of God, it includes us. In this great mystery, God, who has everything for His Son, is wanting a companion for His Son—one who looks like Him, one who is conformed to His image, one who is made like Him—so that forever in eternity there will be the Son and His companion.
It is the great gift of God to His beloved Son. It is the reason behind all of His work. If you look into everything from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, it is all about what God is doing for His Son. If you read the Bible in that light, I think it will help you greatly to understand what is being said.
Several months ago, the germination of this burden came to me because it seemed that the Holy Spirit was whispering again and again this little phrase: changed into His likeness. Now, I know that is the title of a book, and I have not read that book recently or taken anything from that book. But the phrase kept coming back to me over and over again: changed into His likeness.
From that, the Holy Spirit led me to Romans 8:28-29. In the first part, we looked at likeness purposed. Today, we are looking at likeness produced.
That is very important, brothers and sisters. God is not interested merely in some great theme. He does not just write themes or, like some people do, espouse theories. God is in the business of bringing His will to be upon the earth and in His people.
Everything He purposes, He is intent on producing. You need to remember that. If we only look at likeness purposed and do not think about likeness produced, then we are seeing only half the picture.
In the first message, we looked at that great divine purpose: all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Then, when you read the rest of it, you discover the reason: whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He should be the firstborn among many brethren. That is the great divine purpose.
We also looked at this as divine law. In Genesis, we saw God’s law and His purpose set out from the beginning: life begets life of the exact same kind. That is the divine law. Life produces a corresponding life.
That is the whole message of Genesis in the creation story. People get all hung up in the creation story about what it says and what it does not say, but the one thing it absolutely says again and again is that life is to produce life after its kind. That is the one thing it says.
We looked at the divine image and saw how the Lord Jesus is that one and only image. Think of 2 Corinthians 4:4: Christ, who is the image of the invisible God. It cannot be any plainer. There is only one image. There are not different images from which we can select.
God, in His great purpose, is creating us, conforming us, and transforming us into only one image: the image of His beloved Son. You remember, I used the illustration two months ago about the gold standard, and how God in His mercy has a standard that He will never violate. That standard is His gold standard, and by that standard He is working among His people.
Then we looked at the divine process. How great is our God! He gives everything we need so that He can make that happen. He is the divine Workman. He gives divine power by the Holy Spirit, and He gives those exceeding great and precious promises so that we can be partakers of the divine nature.
That purpose is always clear throughout the Word of God. So that was the first message. Today we are looking at this matter: how is this produced?
You have often gone away, probably like me, from a message or a theme and said, “What a great thing.” But, brothers and sisters, it is not just about a great thing. I think some of us know words. I think some of us have impressions. But I wonder how many of us are being conformed to the image of God’s Son.
In the end, that is what He is after. I think of Galatians. I love that verse. To me, it makes all of Galatians understandable; it makes everything understandable. Paul said, “My little children, of whom I am in travail until Christ be formed in you.”
Brothers and sisters, that is the endgame. I do not know if you use that phrase, but the endgame, I suppose, has something to do with chess, when most of the pieces are removed from the board. In the end, there is a plan; in the end, there is a final move. The end of it all is that Christ may be formed in us.
This is what we are looking at today. I struggled with how I might share this because I think it is a huge subject. A lot of people could share a lot of things in a lot of different ways. If we went week after week, we could have a brother stand before us and give great detail on how we are conformed to the image of His Son.
But I have selected to do it in just one message. I hope you do not feel shortchanged, and do not talk me into giving another message. I would like to look at this succinctly. Sometimes, when we look at something succinctly, we get it a little better, and then we can go before the Lord, look at it in greater detail, and let the Lord speak to us.
As I was praying about it, the story of the potter’s house in Jeremiah 18 came to me. The Lord told Jeremiah, “Go to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.” I think that is a strong statement.
I believe that in this story of the potter’s house, the Lord is saying, “Go, and there you will hear My words.” Think about the potter for a minute. You have to use your imagination. Maybe some of you have never seen how a clay pot is made. Maybe this does not make any sense to you. You go to Pottery Barn or Walmart, and you think pots just pop up on store shelves.
But in the old way, the potter was doing a work. That is what the whole story is about. God is doing a work, and it says He is doing a work upon the wheel. All of history can be described by this one phrase: God is doing a work upon the wheel. That is what all history is.
As I meditated upon the making of a clay pot, I thought about how the potter puts his hand upon the clay and turns the wheel. You have seen this, at least in pictures. Some of you may have watched something like it on the Discovery Channel.
The potter puts his outward hand, most gently and in a loving manner, upon the clay. He does not just take the clay and crush it into a big ball. With his loving hand and with minimal friction, he conforms that vessel into the vessel he is after.
This is the work upon the wheel: the outward conforming of that vessel into the image that God is after. As I considered that, I thought that we are conformed by our circumstances. These are outward things, things that God uses. With His loving hand, He conforms us to the image of His Son.
But the potter does not only put his hand on the outside of the vessel. He reaches inside the vessel, and from the inside He lovingly applies pressure and forms that vessel. With outward pressure and inward pressure, He is forming that vessel into one that is meet for the Master’s use.
What does that inward pressure speak of? I believe it speaks of the inward work of the Holy Spirit. We are conformed by the Comforter.
The Holy Spirit’s mission is to take the people of God—raw material, if you will; clay, if you will; the dirt of the earth, if you will—and mold them. By the loving outward pressure of God’s hand, the work upon the wheel, and by the loving inward pressure through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are fashioned into a vessel useful to Him.
Then there is a third thing. It says that the clay was marred in the hand of the potter. We know this story speaks of Israel. The Lord is telling Jeremiah a story about Israel.
As I thought about that, I asked, “Lord, what does that mean? How does that apply to being conformed to Your image?” I believe it speaks to us about our need to be pliable, submitted, and workable. He needs to be able to take us and mold us. If we stiffen, we will mar in His hands.
It seems to me that this tells us we are conformed by the cross. Without the cross, you cannot be conformed to the image of Christ. If you are stiff-necked, if you are willing to go your own way, if you insist upon your own things, if you do not say, “Not my will, but Thy will be done,” you will mar in His hand.
But here is the grace in this story: He did not just throw the clay away. He was not simply done with it. By the way, He will not simply throw Israel away either. Praise the Lord for Romans 9-11.
He takes the clay and remakes it into another vessel, a vessel good for the Master. I believe that other vessel specifically speaks of the church, and I believe that other vessel is made in the image of the Lord Jesus.
So we are going to look at three things. You got it? You follow me? I usually have an outline. When people come up to me and do not know what I said, I get so discouraged. I think, “Was I that unclear?”
Three points in a story. That is all:
There is a lot you could say, but I believe these three things at least begin to give us an impression of what He is after.
I do not know if you realize the value of your circumstances. Many of us do not. But in our theme verses, Romans 8:28-29, it says that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Brothers and sisters, I believe implied in that statement, all things, are all of our circumstances. I believe that is the heart of it. Everything happening to us as we are left here upon this earth, everything happening to us as the people of God, is the working upon the wheel and the conforming of us to His image.
Our circumstances are certainly a great part of that. I read something from Oswald Chambers that said this about circumstances:
We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us.
We can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be.
Brothers and sisters, that is the value of circumstances. It may be things God allows, or things He specifically brings. But whether it is something He allows in our life or something He brings into our life by His divine will, all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Our circumstances can either overwhelm us, which is often the case, or we can overcome. That seems to be the option. Our circumstances can make us bitter, as we often see in people, or they can make us better. Those are the choices.
I believe, dear ones, that our circumstances are the loving, gentle hand of God, forming the vessel into His image. They are outward pressure.
Chambers said something else: “One of the last things we learn is that God engineers our circumstances.” You have heard people testify of this recently. We do not believe He does, but we say we do.
He said, “Never look for second causes. If you do, you will be wrong. We blunder when we look at our circumstances as secondary.”
Brothers and sisters, praise the Lord. He knows just what He is doing in our lives. Everything He is doing in our lives has one single end: to conform us to the image of Christ. In the end, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. Praise the Lord that He knows everything we go through, and all these things are working for that singular end.
I think about the children of Israel. They were always looking for deliverance. But we need to learn a lesson from them. It says they grieved the Lord in the wilderness. He brought them into the wilderness, and immediately, when things were not going their way, they began to cry, “Give us water! We perish!”
When He gave them manna, they said, “Give us meat! You brought us out here to die!” I wonder whether that does not sound a lot like Christians.
God does deliver. Praise the Lord, He delivers. Paul said, I think in 2 Corinthians, “He delivered us, and will deliver us, and on Him we have set our hope that He will also still deliver us.” Praise the Lord, He delivers.
But God’s heart is not always to deliver us from our circumstances. Sometimes His heart is to allow the very things we go through in life to do a work in us—a work upon the wheel that could not otherwise be done.
I think about those in the boat with the Lord Jesus. The Lord was asleep in the boat, the waves came up, and the boat was being overwhelmed. They said, “Lord, save; we perish!”
The Lord, in His loving way, woke up and rebuked them: “O ye of little faith.” Then He stilled the winds and the waves.
You can differ with me on this, but I do not believe that miracle was the Lord’s heart. I believe the real miracle would have been for them to know, “I am in the boat with the Lord. No wave, no wind, can separate me from Him.” Think of what the Apostle Paul said: nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. That was the real lesson to be learned.
The Lord, in His mercy, did the miracle, and praise the Lord, they saw something of Him. They said, “Even the winds and the sea obey Him.” Somehow, I believe that was not the real lesson.
The Lord uses circumstances to deliver us, and we could think of many examples throughout the Old and New Testaments. We have recently been hearing about Abraham. You see something of how Abraham was conformed: he began to think like God, to intercede, to understand His ways.
Then you see a different person, Lot. All you see of Lot is that he gets delivered. Now, I am not against deliverance. If you leave here and say, “That brother, that scurrilous brother, is against deliverance,” I am not against deliverance at all.
The psalmist said that He delivers us out of them. Praise the Lord. Often you ought to seek the Lord and say, “Lord, deliver me from these circumstances.” But there is a valuable lesson that the people of God need to learn. If they do not learn it, they will never be conformed to the image of His beloved Son.
That lesson is the making of character through circumstances. I think that is the lesson of the loving outer hand upon the clay pot.
Think of David. One of my favorite verses about David is Psalm 4:1:
Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.
That may not be one of your favorite verses, but it is one of mine. I think life is pressure. That is my definition. David said, “In pressure, Thou hast enlarged me.” God did a work that He could not otherwise do except in the pressure cooker.
That man became so like his Lord that he became known as a man after God’s own heart. Is that not being conformed to the image of God’s Son?
Years ago, when I was a younger man—I am still a young man, I guess, depending on your standard; not as young as Sid—I remember this burden came alive to me: “In pressure, Thou hast enlarged me.”
When we were first married, Linda had a pressure cooker. I suppose many of you do not use pressure cookers anymore, with microwaves and all the modern conveniences. But Linda could put a roast in that pressure cooker, and it would be done. The flavor would be locked in, and it would be made into something. That roast would just fall apart; a fork was all you needed.
The beans cooked in it seemed so fresh and full. It seems to me there is a principle here: in pressure, the Lord does a conforming that He could not otherwise do.
Linda asked me to update my tired old illustration, so I will give her credit for this one. We went to Tuscan Rio—whatever the name is—Grill. I ordered chicken under a brick. I never knew what that meant. I was looking for the brick. There was no brick.
But she tells me that the brick applies pressure. It locks in the flavor, and the chicken cooks in a way that it could never otherwise cook. There is a work done through pressure that could not otherwise be done.
Dear brothers and sisters, do you know your circumstances as the loving hand of God? Do you know that? If you do not know that, you will not be conformed to the image of God’s Son.
Think of Job. When I was newly saved, I often thought, “Lord, why did You have to tell the enemy about Job? If that were me…” The Lord says, “Hast thou considered My servant Job?” I always think, “Oh, boy. I hope He never does that to me.”
But it seems to me that the Lord was going to do a work in Job. He was going to allow the enemy to touch his very core. Can you imagine? Is that a loving God?
In the end, you see that it is. Job, who had heard of the Lord by the hearing of the ear, in the end saw the Lord with his eye. He said:
For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And at last He will stand up upon the earth.
Something was done in that man through something extraordinary that the Lord allowed in his life. I think this is the lesson of the outward hand.
You could think of the Apostle Paul. Paul’s circumstances were extraordinary. Read 2 Corinthians 11. Think of his shipwrecks, his fastings, perils of robbers, perils among the nations, being stoned and left for dead. Think of all the things the apostle went through.
Remember his early salvation. Paul was an elect vessel. When he was saved, the Lord appeared to Ananias, who did not want to go near Paul. In Acts 9, the Lord said, “He is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel; for I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.”
I wonder whether Paul, when he heard that, recoiled and wondered, “Lord, why did You have to say that?” But I believe he knew that hand of pressure. He suffered great affliction. The Greek word for affliction means pressure. That is all it means.
To return to Linda’s illustration, you are all chicken under a brick. Did you know that? Something is being done, locking in an image, a flavor, a taste that could not otherwise be produced.
Paul’s understanding of circumstances was revolutionized. He said in 2 Corinthians 11:29-30, “If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern my weakness.” What a difference. Do you hear Christians talking like that?
Romans 5:3 says, “We also rejoice in our tribulations.” He did not merely mention them; he rejoiced in them. I believe this is one who understood the conforming work and the ways of God.
He said in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18:
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
Brothers and sisters, I want you to think. The next time, before you just say, “Lord, deliver me,” maybe there is a different approach. Maybe you ought to say, “Lord, is this the loving hand of God pressing me, making me, molding me into Your image?”
I believe this is the way we are conformed to His image, even through our circumstances. May the Lord, in His mercy, give us that Pauline view.
Peter said in 1 Peter 1:6-7:
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials,
That the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
That is the end: conformed to His image. He uses circumstances.
The second thing I want to touch on briefly is that the Lord not only uses our circumstances, but He also has that inward hand forming us.
When the Lord Jesus was about to leave His own, in John 14-17, He made the promise of the Father. He said, “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter.” The Greek word translated another means one of the very same kind: “Just like Me.”
He said, “He abideth with you, and shall be in you.” Can you imagine? The Holy Spirit of God comes into us to take up permanent residence, with a single mission: to transform us and conform us into the image of the Lord Jesus.
What a loving God. Sometimes all we see is outward pressure, but do you know that inside, so that the vessel will not collapse in upon itself, there is another hand? While He is working outside to conform you to His image, He is working inside to transform you from the inside out.
Inside that vessel, there is that other loving hand, that molding hand, that conforming hand. Together these two things work in concert, and they make the vessel into the vessel He wants. This is what I mean by conformed by the Comforter.
Listen to 2 Corinthians 3:17-18. This tells the whole story:
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, the Person in charge of your transforming work is none other than the Lord the Spirit. When the Lord was about to leave, He said, in effect, “I am going to do the unthinkable. God Himself, God the Holy Spirit, is going to be sent on a mission.”
That mission is to conform you to the Lord Jesus, to Himself. Then the promise of the Father to give the Son that companion will be realized. The Spirit will not just visit you on holidays or annually. He will take up permanent residence in you.
Can you imagine? It is almost unthinkable. The promise of the Father, as it is called in Acts 1:4, is almost unthinkable. But that is what it is: the loving hand of God coming to take up residence in us, to conform us, teach us, convict us, and whisper to us, “That is not like Christ. You know what you just did? That is not like Christ.”
Today, I think we would all like to stay home in our pajamas and telecommute. I face that in my office. My oldest partner is dead set against it. Young people who are computer savvy say, “Well, I can do the same thing at home.”
I am not against telecommuting, but I doubt that, as long as that fellow is around, we will have much of it. The Holy Spirit does not telecommute.
His point is this: you have to be together. You have to be face to face. You have to be joined together and involved together. Sure, you can pass information back and forth. I see some computer people glaring at me, so forget it if this does not help you at all.
The whole point is that, in being together, something is done. The Holy Spirit does not merely visit once in a while and update us on what has been done. He comes and takes up permanent residence in us by the Holy Spirit.
That is how we are conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. It is His responsibility to convict us. It is His responsibility to speak to us. It is His responsibility, the Lord Jesus said, to remind us of the things He has said and to speak of Him.
Thank God He has given us His Holy Spirit. Do you think there is one single chance that you would ever be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus without the Holy Spirit within you? It is impossible. You could not.
But thank God that He has sent His Holy Spirit as the permanent, full-time Resident to make us in His image.
In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul says:
Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God? And ye are not your own.
Brothers and sisters, this is the greatest promise. Somehow God has made every provision—even God Himself, God the Spirit—to come into us, take up this project, and make sure that this project is completed.
We say in my business that how a project goes depends upon who the project manager is. Are you the project manager, or is the Holy Spirit the project manager? You see the difference? That is the whole difference.
The One who is God Himself takes on the responsibility and begins to do a work upon the wheel, transforming and conforming us from the inside out into the very image of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is the seal—the guarantee that the work will be done. To me, that is the greatest encouragement.
There are two things we can do that hinder that conforming work. The first is found in Ephesians 4:30:
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.
Many of us have to confess that we have grieved the Holy Spirit of God. You do something, and you just feel it. Sometimes it is almost audible. You sense it as though the breath goes out of you.
I think the Holy Spirit is a divine Gentleman. He never forces Himself. He never holds you down until you scream uncle and says, “I am going to make you like this whether you like it or not.”
But the divine Gentleman is always working, always whispering, always speaking, conforming us to that image. So often we can grieve the Holy Spirit. Remember when the Lord said in Hebrews, “I was grieved with that generation” in the wilderness. You can grieve God.
One day, when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ as children of God, I think one of the questions will be, “Did you grieve the Holy Spirit, or did you allow the Holy Spirit to do His work?” To me, that is such an important question.
The second verse is 1 Thessalonians 5:19:
Quench not the Spirit.
Sometimes we may not grieve the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is speaking and we quench Him. We throw water upon the work of the Holy Spirit. We ignore Him. We sit there and say, “I am not listening. I am not listening.”
Brothers and sisters, if Christ is going to be formed in you, there are two things you must not do consistently, continuously, and ultimately. You will do them at times. I have done things and immediately known that I quenched the Holy Spirit. You have too.
I have done things and immediately known that I grieved the Holy Spirit. You will too. But if we listen to the voice of the Spirit and allow that inward hand to do its conforming work, we should not grieve and should not quench the Holy Spirit.
You remember the prophet: all the wind, all the noise, all the fantastic things, and he did not see the Lord in them. But in the still, small voice, he heard. That is the Holy Spirit, the One who is conforming you to the image of His Son.
The third point is this: we are conformed by the cross. It is interesting to me that the clay marred in the potter’s hand. How often I have marred in His hand.
But I take great encouragement from the closing part of that story. He does not give up. The story could have ended, “The clay marred in his hand”—end of story. “New clay, please.” But He does not give up.
He remade it. He remade it into another vessel, a better vessel, one that would fully express who He was and what He was like. I believe that speaks of the church.
Too often we do not like the message of the cross. When I speak of the cross, do you know what I mean? The cross is such a broad term. We could give messages after messages on the cross.
I am speaking about the experiential side of taking up your cross. There is the cross that saves us from our sins: the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus. Often, when you speak to believers, that is what they mean by the cross.
There is also the cross in which the old man, Adam, is included in the death of the Lord Jesus—the inclusionary side of His death—where the old man is crucified with Christ. That is what Sid is going to testify to today.
Then there is this remarkable thing. The Lord said in Matthew 10, and again after Peter’s failure in Matthew 16, and also in Luke: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
I know there are people in this room who stiffen when they hear a message about the cross. Do not stiffen. That is what the clay did. All it means is that you stay pliable. All it means is that you stay submissive.
All it means is that you say, “Not I, but Christ.” All it means is that you say, “Yes, You are the Potter; I am the clay. You do the work; I will submit.” That is all it means.
Often, however, we stiffen. Without the cross, you cannot be conformed to the image of Christ. Without the experiential cross, you cannot be conformed. The Lord said, “Whosoever doth not take his cross and follow after Me, is not worthy of Me.”
For those of you who are beginning to panic and breathe deeply, do not worry: this does not have to do with your salvation. But it does have to do with the willing, voluntary giving up of oneself to be clay in the Potter’s hands.
The English word conformed occurs only three times in the New Testament. First, in Romans 8:29: we are conformed to the image of God’s Son. Second, in Romans 12:2: “Be not conformed to this world.”
That simplifies it for me. There are two choices. Free will is involved. It is not like Henry Ford: you can have any color as long as it is black. You have a choice in this life.
You are either going to get on the wheel and be conformed, or you are going to mar in His hand. If you are the Lord’s and you stiffen, you will mar in His hand. There are only two choices.
But then the word occurs a third time. Paul is speaking to the Philippian church, the church he loved and that loved him. He is sharing his secret near the end of his letter:
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death.
What is His death? It is the cross. If you are not willing, if you are willful and stiffened, and if you do not go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I am willing,” then the work is hindered. That is all He wants you to say: “I am willing.”
I cannot tell you the number of times there have been things where I almost broke out in a sweat because the Lord was convicting me and dealing with things, and I was not willing. I was not the least bit willing.
But I remember one specific matter—I will not tell you what it was. It was a great day when I said, “Lord, I am willing to be willing.”
I do not want to call You Lord and have You not be Lord. I do not want to say, “Lord Jesus,” while I am on the throne. I do not want to be the one who stiffens in Your hand, who is not pliable, moldable, or workable.
I want to do as You say: “If you are going to be My disciple, take up your cross and follow Me.”
It is a strange paradox. I think people recoil from the experiential message of the cross because they would rather hear about blessing. They think it is negative, perhaps even legalistic. But when you look at the Lord’s Word, it is anything but. It is the greatest gain.
When I was first saved, I had my Good News for Modern Man little stick-figure Bible. As I was reading through it, these verses came alive to me:
He that would save his life shall lose it;
And he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.
I thought, “That is what I have been doing all these twenty-some years—trying to save my life. It is all about me.” But the one who loses his life for Christ’s sake will find it.
Dear friends, this is being conformed by the cross. Are you willing? Are you willing to be pliable? Are you willing to settle, once for all, this issue of lordship?
He says that if you do not, you cannot be His disciple. Paul knew this. Paul said, “I die daily.” Paul said, “Death worketh in us, but life in you.” Do you think that was negative? No, it was absolutely positive.
Paul knew the principle that the working of the cross in the inner man produces one conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. That one is brought into a large place.
I think this is how likeness is produced, at least the way I would put it. I want to challenge us, brothers and sisters, to think about these things. It is not a theme. Let us be done with merely having themes. Let us be a people serious about being the work upon the wheel.
Let us want Him, by His outward loving hand, to mold us and make us. Let us want Him, by His unbelievable supply of the Holy Spirit, to conform us. Let us want, in the end, to live in a submissive way before Him, saying, “Not I, but Christ.”
I often think of Peter. Peter is a rascal with whom we can all agree. He looks like us, acts like us, and talks like us. He is impetuous and coarse, and he always puts his foot in his mouth. Some of you are a little more refined; I am speaking mainly of myself.
He is always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He is always being dealt with, corrected, and rebuked by the Lord, it seems. He is quick-tempered. Just think of Malchus’ ear.
But the Lord was in a making process with Peter. When He first called him—and then called him again in John 21—the Lord was doing a work that explains Peter’s whole life.
When the Lord first called him in Matthew 4:19, He said:
Come ye after Me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Those simple words. At the end, after Peter had been dealt with through many circumstances, after he had been convicted and convinced through many difficulties, the Lord issued the same call in John 21: “Peter, follow Me.”
Notice that there is no longer, “I will make you.” Brothers and sisters, the whole of Peter’s life was a making process. That is the work upon the wheel.
You, like Peter, are being transformed. Look at Peter in the end. In the book of Acts, he stands and gives that message, and three thousand are saved. He is a transformed man, is he not?
Somehow it seems to me—and it should seem to you—that the Lord takes the worst-case model. He says, “I am not going to use John to illustrate this, always leaning upon His breast, always so sensitive. We all think we are like John. Most of us are Peter.”
He says, “I am going to show you what I can do with the most impossible person, if you let Me—if you submit, if you allow circumstances to do their work, if you allow the Holy Spirit to work in you and manifest My character.”
“If you take up your cross, if you settle this issue of lordship, then I will not have to say, ‘I will make you,’ because the making work is done.”
He wrought a work upon the wheel. That is what it means to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.
Lord, we commit these thoughts to You. We ask You to do that work in us according to Your great purpose.
As Christians, we do not want to be those who disappoint You and mar in Your hand. We do not want to be those who are always asking You to change our circumstances when, in Your mercy, You sometimes want to use those very things.
Just as in Psalm 84, we were reading that those who pass through the valley of Baca make it a place of springs.
Lord, we ask You to take us. We want to be clay in Your hand. We want to be pliable. We want to be moldable. We do not want to stiffen.
We want to say, “Not I, but Christ.” We want, in the end, for Christ to be seen and for Your full purpose to be realized.
We commit all these things to You, that indeed in our lives all things will work together for good to those who are called according to Your purpose, to those who love God, that we may be conformed to the image of God’s Son. Amen.