Christian Message Boards: Vessels prepared for His use!

This is topic Vessels prepared for His use! in forum Bible Topics & Study at Christian Message Boards.

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Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :

We make self our god, not God. We just naturally run our own lives. And that's our whole trouble. ...N. Grub!

Look at the number of times the Bible calls us vessels. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." We are "vessels, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work."

Now you see at once the beauty of the illustration: a vessel is a hollow object made to
contain something. And God has made us vessels.
Of course, if God makes us vessels, He fills us. God doesn't fool with His creation; if He made anything to be filled, He must see to it that it gets filled.

This is our receptivity. The whole function of the vessel is to receive something.
Now get this clear: the vessel never be comes the liquid, nor the liquid the vessel. I add this because we humans are so proud that there creeps into us the idea that we can be deified. That is blasphemy. There is no such thing as self-deification, except that of Satan, the pseudo-God, and what we share with him. The divine can dwell in the human, but forever
the human is the human and the divine the divine. God has said, "I will not give my glory to another."

That is the vital importance of the vessel illustration: we are forever the container; He is that which we contain. That relationship never changes. But there are other illustrations which both Jesus and Paul used which give us an enlarged picture of our position as receivers.
The famous one is that used by Jesus when He likened Himself and ourselves to the vine and the branches. Now we get a vital, active relationship. We begin to see that the illustration of the vessel is only part of the truth. A vessel is a dead thing and separate from that which is poured into it. From the vessel you might be led to picture us as simply passive containers. But we're not.
So Jesus gave us the vine and branches illustration. Through this our eyes are opened to the secret of the universe union — the mystery of the universe: how two can be one and yet remain two.

In this dimension, infinite truth is always in the form of paradox. We never get beyond facts that are seemingly contradictory to common sense. In this dimension we can never fully comprehend truth through our senses. Our reason cannot teach it to us. We have to live with opposites which don't meet, with facts that are, to our understanding, not completely logical. It is good for us to recognize this, and to learn to accept both sides—both ways of knowing—in their proper proportions.

This illustration of the vine and the branches is one of those paradoxes. The living God, the living Christ, and I actually become one person and function as one person. Separation is impossible. It has disappeared. We function entirely and forever and naturally as one person. And yet we remain two!

From "The Key to Everything," by Norman Grubb

Col 1:27 "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:"

Posted by Eden (Member # 5728) on :

Hi, Michael Harrison, do me a favor and put the attribution at the TOP of your Topic so that I know beforehand that you are quoting someone, lest I start reading thinking that YOU wrote this? Please attribute your copied articles at the TOP, and not at the bottom. thanks so much.

Eden

Posted by Eden (Member # 5728) on :

Hey, Michael Harrison, I like this guy Normal Grubb also, I may go read him too. How come YOU don't sound like Grubb and Trumbull? I don't mean that to be mean, but you sound so much more "wordy" than Grubb and Trumbull... what do you think of what I'm saying here, Michael Harrison, please?

But in any case, this Grubb fellow and that Trumbull fellow, I think they both "got it", along with Watchman Nee and also Saul-Paul, they all "got it too".

Thanks, Eden

Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :

But eden, I'm not fully convinced you 'get it'. Don't settle for less.

Me, wordy? Watchman Nee wrote how many books, and he did this to say one single thing only. But rather than 'getting it' people find instead, rules, or a paradigm or three to follow.

Top? Bottom! Perhaps it would not have been read if I had given credit at the top.