No Going Back...

A very friend of mine who is facing prostate cancer sent this to me yesterday…

A few days ago I read these words about those who truly embrace the cross, and as I read I recognized the Lord’s work in my life:

They were living to themselves; self with its hopes and promises and dreams, still had hold of them; but the Lord began to fulfill their prayers. They had asked for contrition, and had surrendered for it to be given them at any cost, and He sent them sorrow; they had asked for purity, and He sent them thrilling anguish; they had asked to be meek, and He had broken their hearts; they had asked to be dead to the world, and He slew all their living hopes; they had asked to be made like unto Him, and He placed them in the furnace, sitting by "as a refiner and purifier of silver," until they should reflect His image; they had asked to lay hold of His cross, and when He had reached it to them it lacerated their hands.

....They could almost pray Him to depart for them, or to hide His awfulness... But they cannot go back, for they have come too near the unseen cross, and its virtues have pierced too deeply within them. He is fulfilling to them His promise, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me" (John 12:32). [Streams in the Desert, reading for October 17th]

My prayer, like his, is that God will do whatever it is that needs to be done simply so I may know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:10-11)