We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed—you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

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September 30, 2015

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning Lord. This devotional about becoming broken bread and poured out wine seems like the natural evolution of our supernatural relationship with You. Of course we cannot choose the times and places when we will become broken bread and poured out wine for others. It seems to just be the natural result of being surrendered and connected. And I think Chambers also told us in another devotional that oftentimes our utmost for Your highest occurs when we are not even aware that we are being broken bread and poured out wine….it just becomes the natural result of living out of surrender and connection.

And God says…”When humans seek to become broken break and poured out wine, the result is most often toxic religion; rules, regulations, institutionalized and meaningless routine or self-aggrandizing patterns emerge as humans in their natural state always seek to look right, feel right, look good and be in control. Becoming the supernatural broken bread and poured out wine manifested through you can only be the result of your surrender and connection….then living day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, this Holy Spirit directed life. You provide the surrendered and connected life, I supply the power of the Holy Spirit, and the result is often broken bread and poured out wine. And most often you will not even be beware of this result. You are simply living the surrendered and connected life, delighting yourself in the Lord.”