Sculpted for War; Made for Action

If I fit in too well, it is disconcerting to me.

If the word or message that someone bears is always so easily accepted, it means that it is hardly challenging. I need to be challenged by the Word of God.

It needs to rub me like wet sand paper. Have you ever done stone sculpting?

First, you hammer the shape out, and it is still coarse and rough.
Then you use steel rasps to begin the smoothing process.
Then you use low-grit (really bumpy) sand paper.
Finer and finer sand paper is used until it is pretty darn smooth.

THEN you pull out wet sand paper. You place the stone under or near running water, and you scrub with a low-grit wet sand paper. That means that the sand paper is so fine that it almost feels like regular paper, with a little roughness to it. You have to rinse the wet sand paper because the dust turns into a thin, muddy layer on the paper that needs to be removed so that the paper is still effective.

Then you use finer and fine wet sand paper and the stone becomes shiny smooth.
You do this until the surface is right, then you use a smooth card board on the surface.
Then paper. Then a cloth. Then it shines on its own, without polish even!

Lost Identity

Throughout the process, you lose your fingerprints for a short time.
You can touch things with a delicate sensitivity.
You can feel every bump and texture superbly.

God's Shaping Us

That is how the Word of God should work us, but in a much quicker time frame. From rough rock, to chipped and chiseled, to coarse and bumpy, to sanded and dusty, to smooth and sensitive.

Often in the church (not always!), it is marshmallow fluff, offering Turkish delight-like tidbits that never really satisfy or fill. AND whats worse, those Turkish delights make us keep coming back for more, until eventually our entire actions reflect this starving mad child without a care for how the world is falling down around us. Most people prefer these biblical bon-bons.

Sculpted for War

I am just…made for war. I like the trenches. I like hands-on ministry. I like the unsaved person in the street. I like hanging out with the un-churched because they keep me sharp and ready to deliver a fresh word. I feel that the churches are professionally sitting in the barracks, hoping that the enemy won’t come in, while there are noble and valiant believers giving their lives on the front lines.

Passion MUST drive us. Passionate pursuit of the mission. This is my calling. This is the purpose for which I was shaped and made. Often, though, it will mean that I won't fit in.

And that's ok.