(tm) Day after day. Day after day.

Is there no end to the hammering? The Lord Jesus smiles patiently, having experienced the hammer blows Himself.

Our will is ground in the mill of God and the Substance of Christ is "beaten small" and pounded into our will until the two wills are indistinguishable. Each will is present, vital, undamaged, honed to razor sharpness. The two wills, Christ’s and ours, have been beaten fine and pounded together until God has been formed in us and is dwelling in us both to will and to do His good pleasure.

Let us rejoice because the throne of glory is being fashioned in us. Also, the defense of the glory, the wall of the new Jerusalem, the eternal resistance to all sin, is being created in us (Isaiah 4:5).

Covering the Mercy Seat are the two Cherubim of Glory. One is judgment and the other is mercy. Judgment and mercy. The fullness of God’s judgment and the fullness of God’s mercy. God does not sit on the Mercy Seat. God dwells between the Cherubim of Glory. There is no need for God to sit anywhere for He is All-energy, All-power, All-authority, All-goodness, All-wrath, All-mercy. God is everywhere and Everything at once!

Christ is seated on the highest throne of glory and we are seated together with Him and in Him. However, in order to maintain our place in Him, to keep possession of our crown, we must allow the Father to bring us into obedience, into the fullness of death and resurrection in Himself.

We are to follow the Holy Spirit in all matters. We cannot take hold of the program of redemption and manage it. Each of us has been called to a different place in God’s Kingdom. The full extent of our death and resurrection in God will depend on the place of responsibility and service to which we have been called. The calling of the Lord God of Heaven is upon us. Our task in life is to respond wholeheartedly to that call.

The first and second deaths and resurrections are somewhat the same for everyone. We all must accept Christ and be saved, and we all are commanded to repudiate sin completely and to learn to live in the Spirit of God.

When we come to the area of conquest, while it most certainly is true that each of us must say yes to Jesus when He speaks to us, yet the working out of death and resurrection in God varies from person to person.

There is only so much forming and testing we can stand. To aspire beyond our measure is to be plagued with spiritual ambition. Spiritual ambition runs perilously close to Satan’s rebellion. Let us be content, rather, with what is required of us as an individual. The accompanying challenges will prove to be as difficult as we are able to endure.

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