Monday, May 16, 2011

End Product

For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts, and intent of the heart.  Hebrews 4:12

The leaven works speedily, so does the Word, and yet gradually.  It works silently and insensibly, yet strongly and irresistibly; it does its work without noise, for so is the way of the Spirit, but does it without fail.  Hide but the leaven in the dough, and all the world cannot hinder it from communicating its taste and relish to it, and yet none sees how it is done, but by degrees the whole is leavened.

(1) Thus it was in the world.  The apostles by their preaching, hid a handful of leaven in the great mass of mankind, and it had a strange effect; it put the world into a ferment, and in a sense turned it upside down, and by degrees made a wonderful change in the taste and relish of it; the Saviour of the gospel was manifested in every place.

(2) Thus it is in the heart.  When the gospel comes into the soul it works a change, not in the substance; the dough is the same, but in the quality.

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
Romans 8:5

(3) It works a unversal change; it diffuses itself into all powers and faculties of the soul, and alters the property even of the members of the body.  This change is such as makes the soul to partake of the nature of the Word, as the dough does of the leaven.  We are delivered into it as into a mould, changed into the same image, like the impression of the seal upon the wax.
(Matthew Henry)


The Word - the Bible is the key that unlocks what Christ has intended for us.  The more we memorize, study, and then act upon the precepts that God reveals--we will change and become more Christ-like.  Of course its a process--going on forty years for me; but  I attribute this to a lack of desire on my part when I was younger.  There wasn't an urgency then that I feel now.  I wish I had more of a desire during  my younger years--but that's enough from the "wishing well". 



I wish....I wish....I wish....

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