K-038 the Potter — Art Katz

The Potter and the Refining of Clay

I just feel like starting tonight with describing an experience I had only some months ago in England. I was in a place called Worcester and I had an afternoon off and walked around in this medieval city and stumbled on the Worcester Royal porcelain work.

Remember I told you yesterday I was a man of the tent and my wife is a woman of the knick-knack. You probably expect a guy like me to take any delight in a porcelain factory. But I went in because as dumb as I am even I had heard of royal porcelain.

This factory has existed over two centuries in uninterrupted continuous production. I took the tour and liked it so much that I brought the English brother at whose home I was staying who had never ever visited the place to come with me on the connoisseur's tour.

That's how fascinating it was. And we were told that not even during World War II in the blackout days and when fuel was scarce were they required to diminish their furnaces. The furnaces have continued over two centuries at 4000 degrees Fahrenheit.

So sensitive is the issue of firing as it pertains to royal porcelain. Well I don't think I'll ever recover from the visit and I hope that you'll not recover from this partial description of what I saw.

I didn't realize that so much goes into what they call fine china or porcelain. It was an enormous illumination to see the kinds of pains that men will take for fine things. And by contrast how nondescript and shallow and casual in matter of fact are we with the things that pertain to eternity.

Well I showed you at first how they even formed the clay. I thought clay was clay. That's how unbenighted and ignorant I was. But it's a mixture of many important elements. One is the purest kind of clay available but then depending upon its use it's mixed with quartz, with granite, with other minerals and to produce china, bone china they actually use bone.

Did you know that? I didn't know that. Bone china has a certain kind of tensile quality and strength that permits it to be transparent and delicate and yet very durable because bone is actually pulverized and mixed into the clay batter itself.

It's a highly precise skill in shaping this clay. Men spend lifetimes at it. I borrowed a bike and I rode around the town and sure enough I stopped for a beer someplace where they were playing. Both those men had worked in that factory over 50 years.

See this isn't like America where you're continually on the move. It's transient society. These men were born, they lived and they're going to die in this little town. They serve an entire lifetime making china.

They serve an apprenticeship so long before they even get to touch the stuff. And there's a feel to it that's more than just science. It's art, it's hereditary, it's a sensitivity. There's a pride, there's a tradition.

These men, when I asked them where they had worked when they said the Royal Porcelain Works, they threw out their chest with pride. 50 clay, 50 rock, quartz, pulverized, crushed and mixed together.

Squeeze out the impurities. What do you think, it's going to be just any old clay? Because if there's so much as an air bubble in a piece that is cast, it is thrown into the dustbin. There's a standard of perfection that this factory exercises that will shame us.

They really labor over that raw material before it's ever pressed into a mold. And it has got to be exactly in the right proportion. The impurities pressed out and then allowed to set and rolled and formed into a thick cylinder and then that itself is pressed into different molds and forms depending on what they want to make with it.

And you never saw such molds in your life. Shelf after shelf of molds of such designs. And then the clay is pressed into that mold or poured into that mold. Sometimes it's a centrifugal device that circulates to make sure that that liquid clay shoots right into every crevice, nook and cranny of that mold that it comes out perfectly.

Then it's allowed to stand and to harden with great care, lest any fragile thing break that would render that thing worthless. And then it's taken out with great delicacy and put on shelves and allowed to stand.

As long as it stands, but it's a substantial time until under room temperature, it comes to the place where they can begin to handle it. Then very skilled workers trim off the little edges that need to be peeled and with a little artist's paintbrush and water just blend and soften things and get that thing just right and perfect.

And then if it's a teapot, a spout has got to be added to it and a lid. Imagine if this thing that was being formed had a personality and a consciousness and was just becoming conscious of itself and liked the form that it was enjoying and all of a sudden somebody was taking a snout of it.

It would squeal, but whether it likes it or not, there it goes, splat. It's wet, the ends are wet and stuck in and the edges softened around with the paintbrush until that thing is hardened and the same thing with the lid.

It's allowed to stand further and then when they have a sufficient number, they put it on trays and they put it into this furnace that is roaring continually. Something like that in. It goes in in a timed sequence.

It has got to approach the heat by gradation, lest if the shock be too severe, the thing will crack or an imperfection will show up later. And then the duration in the furnace is timed exactly depending on the kind of object that it is.

And then it comes out just as slowly as it had gone in and the cooling process is as important as the... Well, you would think that it's finished, but it's only in the first stages of production. But you know that something happens because of the intense heat that transforms the substance and makes it into something else altogether.

What went in as clay, as it were, transfigured. If I can use a fancy word, itself is changed by the intensity of the heat. Are you getting the message? If men will take such pains with mere bric-a-brac, what will God take with us?

Standing on the shelf and not being used? What, you complained about the spout that was added to your body and you didn't like it? You complained about other expressions of the body of Christ that were not like you?

Not recognizing that you're porcelain and they're china? And you have different functions, but you're still royal? Listen, the children of darkness are wiser than the children of light. And we can take a cue just watching their operations.

Bonded Together Through the Fire

Well, then comes... You see, these pieces that have been added have been bonded by the fire. You just can't add a spout or a handle or a lid without putting that through the fire so that the two things that have been added have become one.

Sunday after Sunday, for 10 ,000 Sundays, we've never been joined. Those that believe we're together is not a statement of mere physical proximity. It's a statement of the intensity of the quality of relationship which in heaven changes.

Can I teach a little Hebrew course? How good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity? It's like the ointment that was poured upon the head of Aaron and down his beard to the hem of his garments?

Like the dew on Mount Hermon? There God has commanded the blessing, even life forevermore? Where's there? You better know where there is because there's no other place where God has commanded the blessing where the brethren dwell together in unity.

Well, dwelling... I'm sorry to speak to you like idiots. It's not because you're Canadian. It's because you're just believers. And that's the way God has got to speak to us today. We're so dense. You can shame him by pushing the Sunday Christianity in his face and making that to count for the real.

Thinking that we can enjoy the blessedness of which Psalm 133 speaks simply because we share a common facility, cohabitation. We sleep with each other but share the advantage of a common apartment. It's cohabitation.

It's not union. Where brethren dwell together is where they have been forged in the heat. Where you can't tell when a spout ends and the pot begins. Without the other for it to become one new entity altogether.

We got quite a few brittle in the addition of other members of the body. They just don't like it. What shall I say about actually entering into the furnace of affliction together? I made a little note to myself today.

Find community. Community is trial. It is tribulation. It's heat. We'll not go through that fire. We need not think that our substance is going to be changed. We're still a precious thing. A trophy and a vessel in the kingdom of heaven.

See clay can't hold anything. Being fitted to contain and to demonstrate and reveal and to pour out the glory of God. But if we're clay, we'll just sag and dissipate and there'll be rents and hauls and the thing will seep out but the Lord will never use us as a divine container.

It takes heat folks. That's it. I'm sorry. That's the long and the short of it. Whether you like it or not. Whether you'll say ouch or not. There's a necessary passing through a furnace of affliction together.

Repeated Firings and Spiritual Growth

You know what I learned? I was through this tour and she was so proud of everything. She'd been employed like a quarter of a century. She said the more exquisite the piece, the more firings. A fairly expensive piece will go through the furnace as much as 16 times.

Every time there's an overlay of color or a dip of glaze it has got to go through again. See you just don't paint the whole thing at one time. What did you think? That it's like a do it by the numbers kit?

You do the morph colors. You do the red tints. And then you bake the red. Come back you do the earth colors. You bake that. You come back. You do the greens. You bake that. You come back. As many color times as it goes through the fire.

You know what I learned? It's one thing when this glaze is painted. And it's another thing when it comes out of the fire. This side of the furnace comes out on the other side as the experience of this presence.

This failure on this side comes out on the other side of the fire as humility. You can't tell what it's going to look like until it has passed through the fire. The Lord's shelf. Kind of gray thing. Or would you want to be one of those exquisite things that it really is a collector's item?

Multicolored and rich and profuse. Hand painted and all kinds of precious decoration that has gone through the fire again and again and again. You know what I have to say? Most of God's people are pretty dull.

Sometimes it's more interesting to talk to an atheist. Some of us are just little spouting machines with our little favorite cliche or scripture or doctrine. Like we've hit a vein and we stay there. You know what I suspect the fourth is not his.

It's ours. It betrays an unwillingness to be put through the fire every time he adds another color. If I come again two years from now and I'm the same condition then that I am now, would you kick me?

You know what I'm talking about? We should be continually increasing in God. Increasing in richness and in the breadth of knowledge of the word. And in the shaping of divine character and showing forth the glory of him who is fashioning us after his own image.

And if we have been fixed at a certain plateau as so many of us have. It's an evidence that we have been unwilling to be passed through the fire. Interesting little thing that every piece that goes through the fire shrinks one-sixth.

Isn't that interesting? Exactly one-sixth. So if you want to know, you want a teapot or a saucer or some beautiful floral vase to come out a certain dimension. You've got to make it one-sixth larger to begin with.

Because there's a contraction that takes place in the heat. That six is taken out. Glory. Let me ask you, do you still have your six? You need to pass through the fire. Six is the number of men. Six is our filthy.

Six is all that is base and degraded and selfish and vain in him. That needs to be contracted out. We might come exactly into the form and the shape and the size that will reveal his glory. He wants that thing that has changed in the heat to a new kind of substance.

Because they that are in the clay and in the flesh, they cannot. I don't care how nice you look in the clay. Well, they took us to a department that they called the burnishing department, where they actually apply the gold trim.

It doesn't look like anything when it's first put on. It almost looks like a dull brown. It's almost a color that will repel you. And then it comes out. Then, of course, what happens? You've got to go through the fire again.

It is still a strange-looking color. It was not the original brown, but it's turned another hue. But it's not yet gold. Then it comes to the burnishing department. And there are women there who have done nothing else for 25 years or more than burnish gold.

They take silver, a certain kind of a stone, and they rub this gold edge. And they rub it and they rub it. And then they take sand and they rub it and they rub it and they rub it until the gold begins to gleam.

Hand-rubbed. They have not even yet begun to be put into the batch. They have to be molded together and formed with rock. Formed as clay or unwilling to be poured into a mold that was not of your choosing.

Apostle. Or at least a prophet. Or I don't know what, an evangelist. And all that the Lord wants to make of you is an intercessor and a travailer and supplicator who groans and moans, who is never seen visibly by men but is heard of God.

But you don't like that cup of tea. You can't choose your mold. I didn't choose mine. I don't know if you wouldn't believe this or not. I'm a very private man. But you know what I like? Obscurity and hiddenness.

I have no delight in it. If you could follow me around for six weeks, all you would hear is a welter of groans and sighs. I don't find any natural delight that's in agony. But I didn't choose the mold.

It is only for me. And to stand on the shelf, to set and to harden so long as it pleases Him there for me to remain. Itching to get into the action and want to go directly from the mold, right out. I don't like the idea that God has got you on the shelf while you're setting.

Let alone the idea of joining something else and going to the furnace again. I can just hear you shrieking, what, again? And again? And again? Vision workers who are proud of their craft at every stage, it's inspected.

If they find in any stage, especially in the beginning stages, an imperfection, what do they do with it? Crash! Right into the heat. And it's wetted down and it's made again into clay and they start over.

Because why should they invest the expensive processes of heating and glazing and burnishing in a thing that has so much as a spot of defect? I ask you a question. If these men are making things that shall turn to dust and are investing such exquisite care, to what lengths will God Himself go for that which is eternal in the same?

Suffering as God's Refining Work

You don't like being handled that many times? You don't like to pass through the hands of men and you thought it was circumstances in men? No, it was never circumstances in men. It was always God. Let me read you a letter that was written to a saint.

She says, I find myself so often having to explain to people the why of their sufferings. I know of almost no one who has come out unto the Lord who has not been attacked by parents, friends and people whom they love.

That's what hurts. We can suffer hurt from strangers and it means nothing, but from close brothers and friends it hurts. The Lord led me through many coals of fire until it nearly took my life. I literally almost died from a broken heart more times than one and through it all I learned the reasons.

And when I knew what God was doing, not to me, but for me, I could rejoice and see the results. God showed me that the soulish emotions hurt. Jealousy, revenge, unforgiveness, pride, selfishness in any form were a cancer that had to go and that when these were wounded, they must be wounded to death.

Not to shrink that one sixth. There's something that needs to be extracted from the very beginning when that clay is formed and drawn off. You need to go through the fire again and again and again until there's nothing left that can be affected by the burning.

And when we came to the end of that factory tour, the guide on this connoisseur tour, the second time I went, picked up one of these precious china plates and he said, you know how you can tell real china from fake?

Because I always knew that where there's something beautiful and real and authentic, there's also something phony. You know that too, don't you? He said, this is how you tell. And he held that plate up and you could see how translucent it was, why it was so gossamer thin.

You thought it was so fragile that if you spoke too loud, it would crack. The light just shimmered through it in such a glory, such a brilliance. And then he took his finger and he went, I don't know that that sound has ever stopped yet.

It was sounded on earth, but it reverberated, went up through the heavenlies and I think it is still reverberating through heaven still. It's an eternal sound that cannot be duplicated and sounded on anything but that which is pure, that has the precious ingredients that has gone through the fire again and again and again.

If God were to take the body of Christ and cram it in British Columbia with his divine finger and go, what would he get? Would he get a divine heavenly sound? What would he get? There are a lot of cheap imitations, folks, a lot of plaster in Paris, cheapies, that look something like the real thing, but they cannot stand the test of the Ovid.

It takes exquisite hand care at every stage. It takes many colors and hues and it's got to go through the furnace again and again and again and again and again. The writer says, how good it would be if every saint could learn early in his Christian experience that his life is as clay in the hands of the potter.

Not according to his likes and dislikes, but according to the design of the potter. From the time of our regeneration until the day we stand before the Lord complete and perfect, there will never be a day in which the Lord will rest from his marvelous work of grace and sonship.

This work must continue unabated until we stand complete in him. If we submit ourselves to the fashioning of his skillful hands, we will be vessels unto honor and praise in the glory of his presence. But if we squirm and struggle and resist, we may not be found perfect in the day of his coming.

It's very easy for us to sing, have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way. Thou art the potter and I am the clay. It's easy to sing it, but it's not as easy to submit and to the final fiery process of tempering before this vessel is presented to him in holiness.

Processes speak of suffering, pain, and tribulation, and every one of them is designed of God. It should never be sounded from the lips of a saint for anything which they're suffering in this earth. If they had this divine perspective, that God is shaping a vessel...

Can I just direct your attention to the beginning verses of the second letter to the Thessalonians? ...aboundeth glory in you and the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which also ye suffer.

It changes things, doesn't it? It'd be one thing going through furnaces and trials of tribulation if it were some senseless thing that was going to end on a shelf or a mere piece of bric-a-brac or idle decoration or to be shattered somewhere in carelessness or neglect.

But when it's for the kingdom's sake, how much more worthy a justification to allow ourselves to be yielded to the times as it shall please Him. Let me read the same verses from the Amplified, because Paul is celebrating the faith and the love of these believers in Thessalonica.

And he speaks of it as increasing and abounding about their steadfastness, their unflinching endurance and patience in the midst of all the persecutions and crushing distresses and afflictions under which you are holding up.

Know what you have to say about that body of saints? They were being put through the furnace. And know what you have to say about them? As they began to come out on the other side, they abounded in faith and love.

I'll tell you what, I somehow suspect that that's not to be obtainable on any other basis. And this stuff about positive confession, if you say it often enough loudly, if you believe it, is a hokey kind of magical incantation.

It's a cheap way to obtain a real thing. It's a plaster of Paris imitation. The only way to obtain abounding faith and love, and remember, it's only a faith which worketh by love. If you lack the one and yet have the other, it's worthless.

Now passing through the furnace of exceeding persecution, crushing distresses and afflictions. This is positive proof of the just and right judgment of God to the end that you may be deemed deserving of his kingdom.

That's the end of it. Do you see the end to your life? Do you have a divine perspective about your own life? Or is it just the casual collection of days? Do you see church as just the total Sundays? Do you see it as some kind of glorious organism given of God by which the spirits of just men are made perfect?

Is it a place just to come for a netifying message? A few choruses of praise and hallelujah and a pleasant afternoon or sing to saints? Or is it some vital laboratory, a place of affliction itself, a place of the dealings of God by which you are perfected?

That when God will take his divine finger, there'll be a sound that's worthy to be heard both in earth and in heaven and not mere dull thud only. To the end be deemed deserving of his kingdom that you should be made and counted worthy of the kingdom of God for the sake of which you are also suffering.

I'll tell you, if I know why I'm suffering, it takes the sting out. If suffering seems to me senseless, if I can't see any rhyme or reason, if I can't fathom why, then I feel much more the pangs of the pain of it.

But if I see some ultimate purpose in God, if I understand that there's something being fashioned in my character, if there's something that needs to perish in the heat, that God may have a clear sound out of this vessel, I can much more readily lend myself to going through it.

I'll tell you, children, God is wanting royal wars. And to recompense you who are so distressed and afflicted by granting you relief and rest along with us, your fellow sufferers, that when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in a flame of fire to deal out retribution upon those who refuse to obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Note the heck of it is, it's going to be fire in the end, the one way or the other. God's going to judge the earth by fire. It's something for which you need not tremble if you have experienced the fire of God in the redemptive dealings of God.

That when he comes in vengeance to take his retribution on those who have rejected him, that fire need not for you have any terror. You have passed through the divine fire. It's only a fight for those who have avoided it.

I'd rather submit to God now and let him put me through it at his own pace than I should be some untempered piece of mortar and find myself caught up in the fire that God shall bring upon the earth as judgment.

I'd rather submit to God now and let him put me through it at his own pace than I should be some untempered piece of mortar and find myself caught up in the fire that God shall bring upon the earth as judgment.

Christ's Suffering and the Kingdom Requirement

Think about the nature of suffering that seems to be the very heart of the mystery of God. It was true for the first son and it's true for every subsequent son until the end of the age. Even though he was a son he learned obedience by the themes, and shall any son learn obedience.

The concluding chapter of that gospel that is that suffering is not an option. People hear us speak of community of the King of God they say well do you think that this is for all believers? And there was a time when I used to hesitate and feel well it would be presumptuous if I said yes, but I'm not hesitating longer.

It's not an option. It's a kingdom requirement. Anything less than intensive and earnest real relationship with God's people on daily basis is less than the standard of his kingdom. It's mere churchianity.

I don't care if you've got all the charismatic trappings or even have the finest end time teaching. It's more than teaching. It's also dealing. It's also relationship. It's also the furnace of God. I've never been so dealt with except in the fellowship in Minnesota where I am.

Can I give you a for instance? Humiliation after humiliation, 4 ,000 degrees Fahrenheit. We meet every day for prayer. We begin our day in prayer. Well we decided that one of the morning should be exclusively a men's prayer meeting, a women's prayer meeting.

So the middle of the week Wednesday was given to that. I'll never forget the first one. Well it was the wintertime and before we trudged off in our 20 degree below zero weather to the quarter mile place where we were having it in one of the trailers, I found out that my son allowed his mother to make the wood fire in the basement though his room is right by the furnace.

You know the way mothers are, how they'll patronize their sons especially and let them sleep in and always seem to favor them and always infuriate fathers who want to emphasize discipline especially all the more as the end time with Inger because this was a repeated pattern of her indulgence toward this son.

And as the argument was going on I found that my voice was increasingly rising and that the invective and the heat of it was much greater than the issue itself. And pretty soon it was a nasty kind of a thing and I had to leave for the prayer meeting and the door slammed behind me and boy it was just a charged atmosphere and I thought wow good thing I've got about a quarter of a mile to walk, get my spirit sorted out in time to get spiritual for the prayer meeting.

So I got there by that time I had my face fairly well adjusted and sat in a little circle of these men. The Lord has really given us a precious opportunity to tell ties and really face each other as men and have the kind of intensity and earnest conversation and sharing that perhaps we could not have in just the mix for a time.

Anything on anybody's heart? Was it we're singing about that song about to have that old way Lord, make me and mold me after thy word. And so after a moment's silence one of the brothers cleared his throat and he said I have a problem.

Oh I said yeah he said it's you. I said what do you mean? Well he said you're an elder and according to the qualifications that Paul gives for an elder one is ruling your own house well. He said I couldn't help but notice, see that's what happens when you live close together you can't help but notice, that you have a little irritation there with your wife from time to time and especially with your son your old your eldest son.

And I said wow well as a matter of fact fellas just this morning strangely enough before I left the house we had this little tussle over my son and that was the beginning and the heat increased and increased and increased.

Another brother said well he said I noticed I had the same kind of difficulty with my wife and he said I noticed also that I get much more heated over it than the issue itself demands and there are certain things she does that makes me climb the ceiling like not being able to read a map or some other silly things.

Another brother said you know he said just this morning before I left the house I was reading this scripture where it says in Matthew that if any man call another fool rotten he's in danger of the judgments.

When he said that something in my heart went snap. The Lord stabbed me because I was convicted in that moment that that's what I've been doing to my own wife. That my spirit was saying fool and before I got out of that prayer meeting quote-unquote that's that morning the Lord had shown me that there was a pattern that had been going on in my marriage toward my wife by which there was a certain contempt that I was expressing toward her far be above the issues that elicited the arguments.

Now I don't even know maybe I don't have to know what the root of that contempt is. Is it because I've imbibed with my mother's milk an ancestral disdain for Gentiles as a Jew and something about that sandy complected light complected snub-nosed face that symbol of a Gentile world started to rankle something in the depths of my immense that comes out as spite and anger.

Or is it that she's female and I'm male and earlier in my life I've had some painful experiences with the opposite sex which I think I have forgotten but they've left a residue that still lingers and causes me to react in a certain way to my wife because she's a woman.

I'm just hypothesizing I don't know whether it's that at all or it's both or it's more but this much I know. I repented that morning. I was caught with my face sticking out there was no place to run. I was found out I had been rushed into the furnace and I fell before these men for whom I was supposed to be a leader whom I was offending by my failures and I asked their forgiveness and I apologized and repented and wept and when that meeting was over a broken and chastised man not chastised by men but by God through men.

You see the church itself is the furnace if we really are the church exhorting one another daily while it is yet today because tomorrow is too late if you guys think that you're unaffected by that dealing last winter you're mistaken because God took something out of me one sixth because I went through a fire which if I did not who was to say that as I have been speaking to you night by night on such sensitive subject like suffering something of the taint of that earthly thing that clay would have come out in the message or the spirit of it.

Every human admixture has got to be taken out by the heat that when his voice is sounded it is his voice. I can't think of any kind of ministry where this is more crucial than the prophetic ministry which is often the requirement of bringing a fierce if not an altogether destructive word because there's a tearing down a plucking out and a destruction before there's a planting in the building but supposing that there's something in me that still lingers as a Jew toward Gentiles and there you are and I'm looking out on you and I'm bringing a destructive word won't I take a little bit extra relish and delight in doing you in?

Won't I go beyond the purposes of God enjoying this opportunity to turn the knife one more time more than God intended where it's no longer redemptive it's just simply cruel and then you know what happens to you?

You recoil and shrink back and then you nullify the entire message. I can't tell you how many times God has told me prophetically that I'm a threshing machine with sharp teeth but I can't tell you how many times I myself have been threshed.

To be a prophet you go to the furnace again and again and again and again. The question that God wants to put before you tonight have you shrunk from the furnace which true apostolic church which is the community of God is.

Have you satisfied with yourself with something less and something more convenient that heals you and saves you from the necessity of going through threshing because you want to be spared humiliation because you have no desire to embrace the cross.

You like the teaching you like the fellowship you like the suffering enjoyment but you don't want to get any more involved with the saints of God lest it cost you a burning. We think of a plaster of Paris thing that works good enough but God is wanting something much more than utility.

He's wanting excellence to be and have slapped onto us handles and spouts because God has to choose the molasses of God that we might be a glory to his name. There's not an option here there's a must.

Luke 24 verse 21st to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ who has suffered these things and to enter into his glory challenge you to look up the references to glory in the New Testament and perhaps anywhere in the scripture and you'll not have to look far before you'll find the word that precedes it.

These words are twinned they're joined they're inexorably connected you'll never hear God speak of glory without first we find the suffering. You'll never have an exquisite piece that doesn't first go through the furnace an option but then these are the words which I speak with you while I was with you that all the things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and the Psalms concerning me.

The 46th verse thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer. There's an ought, there's a behoove, there's a must. For that son and for every son who will follow him in the way. It's not an option it's a must.

I'm almost doing this at random I could say just turn the next page, turn the next chapter, turn the next book. The theme is woven, interwoven through the whole fabric of the Holy Writ because what is bliss in heaven is first suffering on earth and there's no two ways about it.

It's the very nature of the thing. In a world that is inimical and opposed to God anyone who stands for God and resembles God and is serving the purposes of God must suffer. Those that live godly lives in Christ shall suffer persecution no ifs ands or buts and the fact that we have not yet suffered that is an indication to the degree to which we have missed the godliness of God because my God is forming things that are exquisite and shall be an eternal glory.