It's about being in His Presence and going from glory to glory.
You know, we know that our God is a consuming fire.
Deuteronomy 4:24 says it for the Lord.
Your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Hebrews 12:29 says our God is a consuming fire.
And it's the fire of his presence in the body of believers
that's gonna bring us into maturity and unity.
God promises in Joel 2:28 to pour out His Spirit on all humanity.
Welcome to Global Outpouring.
Where we contend for that promised outpouring,
We equip for that outpouring, so that we may engage in that very outpouring.
I'm Philip Buss.
And I'm Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today.
We're so glad that you're with us.
We are going to delve into the scriptures and into real life about hidden treasures.
Treasures that are hidden from us?
No, hidden for us and hidden in us.
We're so glad that you're with us today on this global outpouring podcast.
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So today, we're going to talk about treasures that are hidden in earthen vessels.
And Philip, I remember some time ago, you preached a whole message about treasures in earthen vessels
from 2 Corinthians 4-7.
Can you just give us an encapsulated version of what that is to give us a springboard to go from today?
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.
And one of the meanings of that word, vessels, means we frail.
And I had read somewhere, it was like a low-grade pottery.
So low-grade pottery is not on the shelf out in front.
It's kind of put in the back.
It's in the bargain basement.
Bargain basement, yeah.
You'll have imperfections.
It may not have actual cracks, but maybe flaws in the design.
Flaws in the glazing and all that.
So things like that, so what happens?
You put that in the back and maybe when it's the last one left, somebody will buy it and they'll get their money's worth out of it.
So when we look at ourselves like that, how frail we are in the natural, we're fearfully, we're wonderfully made.
We can fall down and break an arm or something.
We're very strong, but we're delicate.
And spiritually too, there's things that can happen, can wound us and can mar us and can just damage you.
And it's when we recognize these things, but that's what the blood of Jesus is for because it covers all that.
Because we all have imperfections.
You take anybody you know that you've known them, you just don't think about it.
But you can, yeah, I remember this, I remember that.
Now I'm glad I'm not married to that one, through this or that.
You can always find flaws in people.
There is no perfect person because as long as we are on this earth and we have this mindset that the way we have, we have a natural brain,
we're not fully locked into the spirit yet because we have a soul and our soul wants to control us all the time.
Yeah, the flesh.
Flesh, yeah, that's it.
Earth and vessel.
Well, yeah, God made the flesh of Adam out of dust, out of earth.
But we have this treasure in our vessels.
Right, and the treasure is?
Yeah, treasure is the glory of God, the presence of God because a vessel, even though it has imperfections, has Mars, all this and that,
can still hold what the others hold.
It will still carry that.
So even if we feel like we're Mars, and many times we do, we feel you got slimed by somebody or something like that.
We all know what that is like.
But we just get cleansed of all that.
We keep our sanctified imagination on the Lord and we can just get over that stuff and he can use us.
Very true.
I'm reminded of how Adam was formed of the dust of the ground according to Genesis 2.4.
That word dust is the Hebrew word afar.
That it means dust, like powdered or gray.
And so it can also mean clay or earth or mud, ashes, dust, earth, ground, mortar, powder, rubbish.
That's from the Blue Letter Bible, from the Strongs, I believe, the definitions.
So we see that Adam was formed of the dust of the ground and Job refers to himself as being made of clay.
And we also have Isaiah 64-8 talking about the Lord is our Father, that God is our Father.
We're the clay, he's the potter.
And so we're all the work of his hand.
And in Genesis 3, 19 and 23, where the curse is coming because of sin, okay?
God is saying to Adam, in the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread, till you return unto the ground.
For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
And then verse 23 says, therefore the Lord sent him, the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden
to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Yeah, that is a sad statement.
Very, very sad.
And I love Psalm 103-14 that says, for he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust.
We are dust, yeah.
And so we have to remember that each other are dust.
You know, we have a tendency as human beings to become judgmental, and that's part of the flesh issue.
And kind of tend to treat people like they're dust.
Well, yeah, that's true too.
You know, I remember a pastor one time having a men's group, and he got a word from the Lord.
And he encouraged everyone, I don't think he encouraged them, I think he made them,
go out and buy a very expensive teacup, you know, the English kind that's made of porcelain, you know,
it's very fragile and it's very fine and it's very expensive.
And he said, for the next month, you have to drink every drop that you are going to drink in your life.
Drink it out of this teacup to learn how to treat your wife.
Wow.
Because the wife is, you know, Paul said she's the weaker vessel.
Well, she's a delicate, a more delicate vessel.
Women are not designed to be beaten up on.
They're, you know, we're designed to be loved and men are designed to be respected.
Yeah.
So that's why it's important, you know, Paul talks about it in several places in the New Testament
about husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and women honor your husband,
reverence him, give him respect, because that's how we're wired.
We're, women are wired to be delicate.
We're wired to be treated delicately.
We're wired to be treated like something fragile because we are, where, you know,
a woman goes to tears real easily, you know.
But even porcelain is made of clay.
It's a certain kind of clay, but the formation of a porcelain vessel is, you know,
a little bit different than just throwing it on the potter's wheel with made out of,
you know, some other kind of clay.
It's thinner too.
Yeah, it's made, and I think they put bone in it like bone china.
So the construction of it is, it's to be strong, but it's also delicate.
And you have to take care of it delicately.
So vessels, vessels are meant to contain something.
And we see that God has given us also this picture in Ephesians 3.8, where Paul says,
unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given that I should
preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
So when he's inside of us, there are unsearchable riches available to us that God wants to use
us to bring forth.
And as he used Paul, and as I was, as I was preparing notes for this, the thought came
to me, we can search forever and never come to the end of his riches.
There will always be new revelations of the riches of the anointed one who lives inside of us.
Yeah, beautiful.
And he wants us to recognize one another for who we really are.
Now, this all started the other day when I was waiting on the Lord for, you know,
what do you want to say to me today?
And I just had the notion that I needed to go back to my journals from a ways back.
And because, you know, God will speak something to us and we write it down and it's profound
and it's wonderful.
But if we don't follow up and review from time to time,
we're going to not be doing what he said.
So we have a responsibility to go back and reread and put into practice the things that
he spoke to us.
So I went back to my journal from quite a ways back.
I went to 2009.
Okay, that's a long ways back.
And I read the following thing and I'll say upfront that I have no recollection as to
what situation the Lord was referring to as the case in point.
But obviously I was being bothered by something that somebody did or attitudes somebody had
or imperfections in somebody that was annoying me.
Kind of yank your chain.
Yeah, I guess so.
So this is what I wrote on July 24th, 2009, a long time ago.
As I was waking up, I heard in my spirit, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels.
And at the same time, I saw in my mind's eye the dead sea scrolls in the Kumbh Rang cave.
Then the scripture goes on that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.
And then the Lord began to speak this to me.
The treasure, my presence, my word is within.
Don't look at the earthen vessels.
And don't look at the exterior of the vessel and judge the contents.
Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.
Remember that's from 1 Samuel when Samuel is looking at Jesse's sons.
And he's saying, surely this is the Lord's.
Surely this is the one.
Yeah, just look at him.
And the Lord says, mm, that's not the one I have in mind.
He might look good to you on the outside, but I know his heart.
And he's not king material.
So back to what the Lord was saying.
Leave my vessels to me.
As long as you continue to have shortcomings and areas in which you have not yet overcome
and you continue to walk in the limitations of unglorified flesh, be careful how you judge
others who have not yet overcome.
I am patient with you and have gained much ground in you.
Some was taken little by little and some all at once.
You keep asking me to teach you my ways.
I have brought this case in point into your midst to show you another facet of my character
and how I deal with hearts.
Keep watching and keep learning.
I am well able to use earthen vessels to pour out my glory.
Sometimes I use contentious preachers to preach my gospel and bring souls into my kingdom.
Sometimes they are all I have to work with.
Walk humbly before me.
I want to teach you by my spirit the difference between the discernment that comes by my spirit
and the judgment that comes by the letter of the law.
Be careful not to be a Pharisee.
Let my love be your standard.
I see the finished vessel.
You see the lump of clay.
Leave my lumps of clay to me.
Don't speak what you see with your natural eyes.
Speak my mercy and grace and I will show it.
Speak my eternal purposes and I will bring them to pass.
I have given you a privilege to show mercy and love to one of my imperfect vessels.
You will receive back that which you have given.
Just down shaken together and running over.
Isn't it amazing what I can do with imperfect vessels?
The excellency of the power is mine.
I will do what pleases me.
If you watch humbly, I'll let you see my process.
If you watch proudly, you'll only see the truth in the end.
Beautiful.
Ouch, hallelujah, yeah, yeah, that's one of those things that I just had to stop and
humble myself and repent.
I'm sure that that brought repentance at the time.
I didn't write about it, but I'm sure it did because you don't hear a word like that
from the Lord without stopping and saying, oh, I'm sorry.
I've been judgmental.
I'm sorry.
The Lord just wants to set us free in those areas and to treat one another as though there's
treasure inside.
It makes me think of what Papa Dorn used to say.
Robert Dorn was my pastor many, many, many years ago, and he taught in our School of
Ministry for many years.
He used to say, Jesus is inside of you and Jesus is inside of the other person.
So be nice to Jesus.
And that really helps.
It helps us remember.
And I've learned through the years that I can put up with a whole lot of stuff, especially
if I know that a person is going to come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and they're
going to repent.
They can blow off steam and say things that they probably shouldn't say, but if they have
a track record with me that they're going to come back and say, I'm sorry, it gives
me a whole lot of grace to just let them blow off their steam and get it out of their system
and then they'll be okay.
And we don't know what somebody's going through.
There's that saying that I think it's an acronym that spells the word halt.
You're most vulnerable to doing something in the flesh if you're hungry.
That's the H. If you're angry.
If you're lonely or if you're tired.
And as I've pondered it, I think you need to add to that if you're not feeling well
or if you're in pain.
Those things make people tend to be more ready to bite your head off or get angry or act
in the flesh.
Have a flesh flash.
Okay?
That's a flesh flash.
And sometimes there are those things that there's hunger or anger, like especially people who
have low blood sugar issues.
If they get hungry, they can get cranky.
Well, yes, you're talking to one of them through the years.
You've watched me get cranky before supper time.
Don't talk to me about something that might stir me up.
I'm less likely to be patient if I'm hungry.
That happens to people.
And if we will learn not to be triggered when someone else gets triggered, maybe something
we did triggered them to blow and have a flesh flash.
Or maybe there's something that we don't know about.
Maybe something has happened in their family.
Maybe somebody got angry with them at work or you hear the story of dad comes home from
work and he got fussed at at work.
And so he fusses at mom when he gets home and then mom fusses at the kids and then the
kids.
Just kick the dog.
Yeah, exactly.
And it becomes a chain reaction in the spirit because there are spiritual things, spiritual
entities that are trying to disrupt our lives and trying to keep us in the flesh and out
of the spirit.
But the cool thing is, as I was meditating on this that I read, another thought came
to me that I hadn't put together before, that not only is dust and clay something that can
be made into a vessel.
Sand is also a kind of earth.
It's also a kind of dust, particularly sand that's been ground down from quartz.
It's called silica or silicone dioxide.
And if you heat that with the other proper ingredients, it turns into glass.
Yeah, it's amazing.
And glass has been known way back into ancient Egypt.
There were objects, there's archaeology is uncovered objects that were made of glass.
And you have some nice Roman earrings.
Yeah, Roman glass.
The Roman glass that you bought me.
That I bought you.
Sweet.
So I did a little bit of research.
And here's an interesting, before we get into a little bit of research, here's an interesting
verse that also is about hidden treasures.
Okay, we've got these treasures, the treasures of the word, we've got the treasures of the
presence of God in us as earth and vessels.
But here's another place that you find them.
Deuteronomy 33, verses 18 and 19.
This is where Jacob is prophesying over his sons and he's talking about zebulin.
And he says, and of zebulin, he says, rejoice zebulin and you're going out and Issacur
and your tents.
Those two always went together, zebulin and Issacur.
They shall call the peoples to the mountain.
There they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness.
For they shall partake of the abundance of the seas and of treasures hidden in the sand.
So sand can be made into glass.
And you can do that by heating it up really, really hot.
And you can see it in nature.
And maybe this is where they got the idea to start making things out of glass.
I have a piece of glass.
What was sand, we got it when we were down in southwest Texas where lightning hit the
sand and melted it.
It melted it into a hard thing.
I thought, wow, yeah, I thought, what is this?
And so I said, that's lightning.
That's where lightning hit the ground and did that to it.
That is so cool.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then you can also see obsidian is a natural type of glass that's formed from volcanic
eruption.
It's those elements that have been put together and it's part of what got heated up and it
acts like glass.
It behaves like glass.
And you can chip it down to make something sharp to cut with or whatever, stone age tools.
And meteorites striking the ground can produce glass as well.
But if you want to make glass, you have to heat it like 600 to 1700 degrees centigrade,
which would be 1920 degrees to 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's like very, very hot.
I work with glass at a glass company and we would do board ups.
And if a big piece of plate glass broke within three feet of the door, it had to be replaced
with safety glass.
Well, what they do, they take the glass, remember we loaded this piece of pre-cut glass back
of a truck and I drove it to a place, there was only one place in Chicago that did this,
and they would take the glass with these little clips, would get the top of it, take it off
and they would blast it, I think like about 1500 degrees or something for like so many
seconds and that would temper the glass.
Yeah.
And a lot of times you can look in windows and stuff and you'll see a little wave and
you look at the top, you can see like little, little tiny things where the things were actually
holding the glass, kind of melted it into it.
But sometimes the glass doesn't survive and it shatters.
I could see on the bottom those that didn't make it.
This pile's a glass down there, I thought, oh boy, hope that don't happen, that's a total
loss.
Yeah, I think.
But it was very educational.
Yeah.
So there's glass and then there's tempered glass.
Is that safety glass?
Is that the same?
Yeah, it's a safety glass, a type of safety glass.
So what happens if that shatters?
Yeah, it's like it goes into little tiny pieces.
It's like the windows of your car, your sunroof or your side windows and your back window
is made out of tempered glass, but your windshield is made out of laminate glass.
It's two pieces of glass with plastic inside of it.
It's kind of like it's glued to itself, it gets hit.
You can still see through the cracks like you see you get the runs in your windshield,
it's usually in the top layer, but you have to have the whole windshield.
But that was the regular kind of safety glass, the whole thing would just, in front of your
eyes would turn into a, you know, it would just all go to be awful little cracks, you
couldn't see nothing.
Yeah.
So those are things that have been implemented in the industry in order to keep you safe.
Keep you safe, yeah.
Because if you use ordinary glass and it shatters, it shatters into very sharp edged things where
safety glass, it's more like little round pieces that aren't as dangerous, right?
Yeah.
I remember when we had our accident and we came out of it, you know, the first thing
I did, I spit glass out of my mouth.
So did I.
You know, it was the tempered glass.
The car was totally up on its side, my head and my hand were on the, actually on the
asphalt, out the broken window.
You know, and I remember waking, kind of coming out of it and spitting glass out of my mouth.
Yeah.
You know, I was just semi-conscious.
Right, right.
So the point is that there are things that can be done to glass to make it more safe.
The ancient glass that they made wasn't actually transparent.
And it took a while before they learned in the glass making industry, you might call
it that you add certain substances to it to actually make it clear.
And one of the ways that you can make it clear is by adding lead to it.
You've heard of lead crystal?
Lead crystal, yeah.
It's not actually crystal because it doesn't have any facets to it like something that's
actually crystal, but they call it crystal, but it's really leaded glass.
But they substitute lead for one of the other ingredients, you know, in actual glass making,
you would have three things, sand, which is silicon dioxide like quartz, limestone, which
is calcium carbonate, and soda ash, which would be sodium carbonate.
And then there are plants that you can use to, you reduce them to ash and those can be
used as one of those ingredients.
And as the industry began to really come into its own where they developed clear glass,
that's where this leaded glass came in.
And the more lead you add to it, the more beautiful it becomes.
It sparkles.
Sparkles, huh?
Lead, I love lead crystal.
We've got a couple of pieces that you bought me when we were in Romania years and years
ago because they make it there.
And Sister Gwen Shaw, our founder, had a number of pieces.
So we're living in her house and so we have access to those.
I just love how the light sparkles through it.
And that's the point I'm getting to, that earthen vessels can also be transparent.
And the more lead that you add to it, think the weight of glory.
Okay, cavod, the Hebrew word for glory.
Glory, uh-huh.
That means weight.
So think of the weightiness of his glory as it gets added to this earthen vessel that
starts with sand.
You know, think of taking a handful of dirt from your garden.
That's full of stuff that has been decomposed.
It's organic material that has decomposed.
And it's really good for growing stuff.
But it's not very good for shining the light through it.
And if you've got clay, a clay vessel, like an old clay pot or something, you're going
to cook beans in or something like that.
It's great for cooking beans, but you can't see the light through it.
But if you take something as delicate as sand, you get a handful of sand, dry sand, and it
just goes through your fingers.
So it's really like you can hardly even work with it.
It's so frail.
There's not much you can do with it.
It's great for on the beach.
You like to have it on the beach rather than a rocky beach, you know?
But it's not something that you would think you could make something beautiful out of.
But you take that frail loose, something that you can't even grab ahold of and hang onto.
And you put it in the heat of the all-consuming fire of our God in His presence.
And you add something weighty like lead to it.
Wow!
What is that going to produce?
It's going to produce something transparent.
It's about being in His presence and going from glory to glory.
We know that our God is a consuming fire.
Deuteronomy 4.24 says it for the Lord.
Your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Hebrews 12.29 says our God is a consuming fire.
And it's the fire of His presence in the body of believers that's going to bring us into
maturity and unity.
And I love what Ephesians 4 talks about.
And I'd like to read it from the Passion.
I'm going to read several verses from verse 11 to verse 24.
This is where he's talking about the five-fold ministry.
The five-fold ministry are supposed to be mature believers.
Sometimes there's flush flashes out of them too.
Because there's not any one of them that has reached perfection yet.
Otherwise they'd have been raptured.
Just like Enoch Walketh.
Like Enoch Walketh God took him.
God took him because he made it to perfection.
But the rest of us haven't made it there yet.
So that's why we have to be full of grace for each other.
So here's what I love the Passion translation.
And he has appointed some with grace to be apostles.
And some with grace to be prophets.
And some with grace to be evangelists.
And some with grace to be pastors.
And some with grace to be teachers.
And their calling is to nurture and prepare all the holy believers to do their own works
of ministry.
And as they do this, they will enlarge and build up the body of Christ.
These grace ministries will function until we all attain oneness and the faith.
Until we all experience the fullness of what it means to know the Son of God.
And finally, we become one perfect man with the full dimensions of spiritual maturity
and fully developed in the abundance of Christ.
Isn't that beautiful?
Yes.
And then our immaturity will end.
That's where the flesh-fleshes end, right?
As we come into know, the more we know him, the more we spend time in the presence of
our eternal Father, the all-consuming fire, the more he heats us up.
I'm not reading now.
I'm commenting.
The more he heats us up in his presence, the more transparent we're going to become,
right?
We will, okay, now I'm back to reading.
Then our immaturity will end.
And we will not be easily shaken by trouble, nor let astray by novel teachings or by the
false doctrines of deceivers who teach clever lies, but instead we will remain strong and
always sincere in our love as we express the truth.
All our direction and ministries will flow from Christ and lead us deeper into him, the
anointed head of his body, the church.
For his body has been formed in his image.
Wow.
Yeah.
And is closely joined together and constantly connected as one.
And every member has been given divine gifts to contribute to the growth of all.
And as these gifts operate effectively, throughout the whole body, we are built up and made perfect
in love.
So with the wisdom given to me from the Lord, I say, you should not live like the unbelievers
around you who walk in their empty delusions.
The corrupted logic has been clouded because their hearts are so far from God.
Their blinded understanding and deep-seated moral darkness keeps them from the true knowledge
of God.
Because of spiritual apathy, they surrender their lives to lewdness, impurity, and sexual
obsession.
But this is not the way of life that Christ has unfolded within you.
Within you.
This treasure that's in earth and vessels.
Within you.
If you have really experienced the anointed one and heard his truth, it will be seen in
your life.
For we know that the ultimate reality is embodied in Jesus.
And he has taught you to let go of the lifestyle of the ancient man, the old self-life, which
was corrupted by sinful and deceitful desires that spring from delusions.
Now it's time to be made new by every revelation that's been given to you.
And to be transformed as you embrace the glorious Christ within as your new life and live in
union with him.
For God has recreated you all over again in his perfect righteousness.
And now you belong to him in the realm of true holiness.
That's beautiful.
That's the treasure in earth and vessels.
As we become transparent, we're going to magnify him.
I remember some years ago, quite a few years ago, leading worship one morning in our devotions
time and we were singing a song about, oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt
his name together.
And I had this thought go through my head.
How do we magnify the Lord?
And I saw in my mind's eye a picture of a magnifying glass.
And I realized that the thing that makes us able to magnify him is being transparent.
So that transparent glass comes from spending time in his presence and spending time in
that heat, that intense heat of his love.
His love for us is what makes him an all-consuming fire.
It's his love for us that provides the oxygen around us.
And you have to have oxygen to have a good fire, right?
So the love of God is what gives us that intense heat that transforms us and changes us.
And a magnifying glass is convex on both sides.
It's a curve.
It's an outward curve.
Concave is a curve that's shaped like a cave.
So it's an inward curve.
And we don't need an inward curve.
We don't need to be more inward.
We need to be more outward, letting the love of God put us out into that roundness, that
beautiful shape that will magnify him, that people will be able to see through our flesh
into that glorious Christ that's within us, that glorious anointed one that's in us, that
leads us into the truth and leads us in love and leads us in purity, becoming transparent
and letting people see, yeah, I've got flaws.
I'm not perfect yet.
But Jesus inside of me is perfect.
And so he can pour out his glory through us.
And there's a scripture, 1 Corinthians 13-12, for now we see through a glass darkly, but
then face to face.
Now, I know in part, but then shall I know even as also as I am known.
Amen, in the passion, 1 Corinthians 13-12 says, for now we see but a faint reflection
of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror.
And the mirrors in those days were not plain clear mirrors.
But one day we will see face to face.
My understanding is incomplete now.
But one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully
understood.
We see through a glass darkly.
So in 2 Corinthians 3-18, we see a similar word, but we all with open face, beholding
as in a glass or a mirror, the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from
glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.
And that word glory, remember we were talking about in Hebrew, the word glory has the idea
of weight to it.
But in Greek, the word is dhoksa, and it has the idea of opinion or judgment or view.
So we're looking at something and we're determining in our understanding the value of something.
So one of the meanings is splendor or brightness, like of the moon and the sun and the stars.
It can mean magnificent, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace and majesty.
And it can also refer to angels as a parent in their exterior brightness, a most glorious
condition, a most exalted state.
This is the outline of biblical usage from the Blue Letter Bible.
This idea of going from glory to glory, it's going from one weightiness to the next weightiness.
And it's like going from, when I think of glory, I think of, you know, when you look
at a little flame, the flame on a candle, you see the flame itself, but there's like
a circle of brightness around it, a glow.
And I always think of that glow when I think of glory as that brightness that surrounds
something that is a source of light.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
You know, I remember it was Steadley Pimlot.
He was a minister out of Norwich, England.
He was looking in a mirror one morning getting ready.
He was in his 70s, wasn't he?
Yeah, he was reading his Bible that was sitting on his dresser.
Okay, was he reading that scripture?
I don't know what scripture he was reading, but he was reading his Bible and he glanced
up.
And he saw himself as what his glorified body would look like.
Yeah.
You know, he was just so young and beautiful and all that, and then, incident was gone.
Yeah.
It was like a glimpse.
A momentary glimpse.
Yeah.
What's to come?
Yep.
That's treasure in these earthen vessels.
So our choice today is how much are we going to let the fire of God, and sometimes that
fire comes in fiery trials.
Remember you were once upon a time, a long ago, you were waiting on the Lord and you
heard that scripture out of Peter about, don't be surprised at the fiery trial, which is
to try you.
Yeah.
And I went through a fiery trial.
You went through a fiery trial in your health at the time.
But God was kind to you to give you that, and I'm sure that whatever you went through
did something in your character, did something in your life, did something in your processes
of how you process things to give you a greater understanding and greater revelation.
And it's somehow, I just know that that's how God works, that it elevates you into a
different place.
Because it's like going through school, you learn something, and then you practice it,
you review it, and then you're tested on it.
And you're tested to see, did you really learn this?
And sometimes the fiery trials in our lives are for that purpose to check and see, did
we actually learn the lesson, or do we have to go back and review again?
So the Lord is trying to challenge us that we have this treasure of Him inside of us.
And we have the opportunity all the time to judge or to give grace to other people who
also have a treasure in their earthen vessel.
And we have the choice of how much are we going to let the love of God shine through
us.
It's Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Yes.
Yeah.
And we've got to let that hope out.
Yeah.
We've got to give room for each other.
We've got to have love for each other, enough to cover each other when we've made a mistake.
And I just want to close with this thought from Revelation 12, verses 10 and 11.
Now is come.
Now is come salvation and strength.
And the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ, His anointed one, for the accuser
of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night, and they
overcame Him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.
And they love not their lives unto the death.
So when we are being challenged by someone who has done something wrong, someone who
knows better, someone who has been misguided, misled, someone who's been tricked.
There's a lot of times that witchcraft is being done on our brothers and sisters and
the Lord, especially, especially preachers.
You know, they're coming under direct attack.
Yes.
They're coming under direct attack from the enemy to try and discredit them and push them
off the scene.
So God is trying to help us, to help each other to grow up into the maturity of the
Lord as we let His love shine through us and as we become intercessors for those who have
made a mistake.
And instead of judging them and instead of calling them out on the carpet, you know,
what did Jesus say in the first place?
If your brother offends you, what are you supposed to do?
Forgive him.
Forgive him, first of all, but also if there's something needs to be dealt with, you go to
him personally, one on one.
You don't talk about it with other people.
You go deal with it one on one.
And if you come to a conclusion that's amicable, then it's over.
And if the person doesn't hear you, then you go with someone else.
But you don't take it to the whole body until you've done those other steps.
And it grieves my heart when we have people out there that are accusing one another of
this and that, especially now that we have all the social media where we can just say
anything we want to.
And we get into trouble with that.
But God wants us to learn to be intercessors for each other and cover one another with
the blood of Jesus Christ and bring that forgiveness.
And as we pray for each other, that sets people free to realize, oh no, I made a mistake.
But if we hold judgments over them, it will keep them in bondage so that they won't even
feel like repenting.
But when we become intercessors, it will help and it will help to bring the body of Christ
to maturity.
And that comes from our intimate relationship with our Father, the all-consuming fire that
helps us to become transparent in Him, going from glory to glory.
So as we're going from glory to glory, as we're helping one another go from glory to
glory, as we're helping one another overcome by our intercessions, we are making the hidden
treasures of the Word of God viewable.
We're making the hidden treasures of the presence of God obvious and manifest in our
lives so that the world can see that this hidden treasure is something that they're
going to want.
Father in the name of Jesus Christ, we pray for all of our listeners, Lord, to have this
revelation of how they can become intercessors for those that have made mistakes, how we
can all exhibit more of your glory by letting you burn your fire in us and transform us
even by the testings that we go through, Lord, that leads us into your hope and into your
glory.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Lord, we just pray for that mighty grace that comes from
your presence to help each and every one of us to be transformed by the renewing of our
minds to go from glory to glory and let your hidden treasure that's inside of us be manifest
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
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Until next time, this is Sharon Bass.
And I'm Phillip Bass.
And bless you with this overwhelming, loving presence.