The Anointing

by Rocky Fleming

Day 3: Gaining Through Perseverance

Persevering through things that challenge our faith, our sensibility, our experience, our pride, our well-being and our comfort zone is a necessary step to prepare us for God’s favor to fall on us.  It is a pre-qualifying process.  It is preparation.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to discipline, prune and sometimes sift His man or woman, and it is His discipleship plan to do this.  Why does He do it?  It is so that He can discipline our destructive thoughts and sinful habits to the point that we release and turn from them, and then He prunes off self-centered, self-sufficiency tendencies that prevent Christ-centered transformation from growing in our life.  Perseverance is exemplified by slow cooking on a low flame until the desired effect is accomplished.  Let me explain:

I’m reminded of a cooking process my wife uses when making seafood gumbo.  It takes some time to prepare and cook the ingredients.  All of the vegetables, spices and seafood have distinct flavors.  But as a result of slow cooking over a low flame, those individual ingredients break down and join with each other into one flavor.  The result, in my opinion, is the tastiest seafood stew anyone could ever eat. I love it.  But it requires a lot of time and love on her part to make it.  

It is the same with the perseverance that God requires His man to go through—a long, enduring trial that breaks down his raw ingredients of personality, personal experiences, gifts, talents, and time of life.  When the flame is finally removed, the result is Christ-likeness.  In the process, God puts all the theories we have learned about Him in the heat of adversity with a finished product that He has in mind.  It is a long, slow process, but it is a loving, nurturing process that is slowly moving a child of God toward a man after His own heart.

As we commit ourselves to be a loving expression of Christ, we have old leftover habits that tend to try and “get it done” for the Lord.  This might be admirable and in our own mind a dedicated effort for Him, but they simply get in the way instead of getting it done.  This is setting up the inevitable frustration and discouragement that we see following many Christians around.  When I see this frustration and discouragement in these sincere Christian leaders, I also see something consistently missing with their intimate connection with Christ.  This must be found, even if it requires the flames of adversity, for it is this connection with the Vine that enables the anointing they desire.