\u201cThough You Slay Me\u201d<\/a> is that they reminds us of an aspect of our Father that is too often pushed aside and ignored, namely that God disciplines those whom He loves. He actually does make us worthy, and in turn we display His glory and worth in that our hearts are wholly set on Him.<\/p>\nOne way we display and magnify His glory and worth is when He takes from us, for whatever the reason, and we respond by blessing and loving and leaning harder into Him.<\/p>\n
He tries us in the furnace of affliction, sometimes when we have fallen into sin, or into idolatry. Such was the case with His people when Isaiah recorded\u00a0those words. But sometimes it is not the result\u00a0of some gross sin or idolatry as we see\u00a0with Job. God lovingly cleans out the cluttered closets of our hearts and makes room for us to see Him as greater and more supremely satisfying than absolutely anything else we could possibly desire or even need. \u201cFor my name\u2019s sake\u2026 For my own sake\u201d He says, \u201cI do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why do bad things happen? Why is life under the sun, difficult and filled with trouble after trouble. On this earth, every birth is followed by death and every joy ends with tragedy. Why? Because God has done it. But why? Because the end of the matter is to fear God, which is to love God, which is to glorify God. Which means that our trouble on this planet, and our cycles of joy and tragedy, because of God\u2019s love for us that is founded on His ferocious love for Himself, those things, and all things, are working in us and for us, His children, to display that <\/i>glory\u2014to display<\/i> His glory. <\/i><\/p>\n
God is using you. His artwork. His trophy, created in Christ Jesus. You are His masterpiece, on display in this broken down and groaning gallery, for broken down and groaning people to see. To witness His worth by seeing His work. You are His light in this present darkness. You are His witness. You are His workmanship.<\/p>\n
That is what is means to be worthy. That is why a God who tears, who breaks, who ruins, who disciplines those whom He loves, is a comfort and not a terror. He is a skilled craftsmen, a potter, a painter, a director, an author. He is working. His craft is to glorify His name and He has chosen you to be His canvas. His child. And not because loving you, in and of yourself, is the end of the matter. It isn\u2019t. That would be as foolish as saying the end goal of a painter is to love a blank canvas. No. A painter loves a blank canvas in the first because of what he intends to do with it. In the end, he\u00a0loves the masterpiece. God\u00a0loves glory and goodness and justice and truth and mercy, and for that reason\u2014for His own sake, He has loved you and will not leave you empty. He has made you full. He is making you full. So come and be filled. Welcome to Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cFor my name\u2019s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-exhortation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5C2eY-sX","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}