Malachi is a book of restoration, speaking in its initial prophecies about the people after their return from exile in Babylon. Malachi was a good prophet who spoke forth, trying to establish the remnant that had returned and to encourage their hearts in the things God had for them. Haggai and Zechariah were also prophets who were positioned during the centuries of restoration. However, Malachi basically was the prophet of the Kingdom of God who was relating to the time when the worship of the Lord would be fully restored. Verse 11 of the first chapter is his prophecy about the days of universal worship: “For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of hosts. Malachi then described the corruption which existed in the worship in that day.
It is very important to see that Malachi was speaking about a day in which God was going to bring forth a pure worship. He repeated that same important theme in chapter 3, verse 2a: “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears?” The first verse says, “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me …” Without question, this refers to John the Baptist. Therefore we see that a part of this passage in chapter 3 has already been fulfilled, but we know that the prophecy will have its principal fulfillment in our time. The book of Malachi ends with the prophecy that Elijah would come again (Malachi 4:5). When the disciples brought this prophecy to the Lord Jesus, asking, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come before You?” He answered, “Elijah has come, if you can receive it.” Then He went on to point out that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah (Matthew 11:14; 17:11–13). Yet when they asked John the Baptist if he was Elijah, he said, “No, I am not.” There was no knowledge of that in his own mind (John 1:21). Elijah came in the person of John the Baptist, and in the end time the spirit of Elijah is to return again in a special manifestation. This, of course, is what Malachi prophesied.
I think that God has reserved a unique time of bringing back the spirits of those who have gone before, those who are in the cloud of witnesses. This has not been a common occurrence, but no doubt there will be a special manifestation of them in the end time. They have the promise that they will be among the first ones to break through into resurrection life. According to I Thessalonians 4:15, we will not precede those who have gone on before.
The prophet Malachi asked, “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years.” Malachi 3:2–4. This prophecy was not fulfilled at the first coming of the Lord to any degree at all; nor does it indicate that there will be a rapture. It speaks about the pure worship that is going to come forth.
This prophecy is not speaking of the natural tribe of Levi, but it is representative of the marriage of the tribe of Levi with the tribe of Judah, in a symbolical picture of kings and priests coming forth, so that the priesthood becomes a ruling, warring priesthood. The Levites were not only priests of worship before the Lord; they were also servants in the sanctuary. The great prophets and priests came from the tribe of Levi, whereas most of the great warriors and leaders of Israel came out of the tribe of Judah; they moved in authority and were destined to rule. David himself was an example of that, for he was of the tribe of Judah, as was Jesus. Jesus is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He was not of the priestly tribe of Levi. Yet because He came forth after the priestly order of Melchizedek, He qualifies as High Priest.
God said that He would refine the sons of Levi. The priests of the end time will be initiated by a purification process such as that used to refine gold and silver in the fire. Then they will bring forth the pure worship to the Lord. As surely as you set yourself to be a worshiper, you are going to become a partaker of the refining process that God has instituted for His priests. You may wonder at this process. You begin to worship the Lord, and just as you break into a new realm, almost immediately God begins to deal with areas in your life that have never been dealt with before. God has been looking so long for worshipers that when He finds one, He is going to perfect him. Jesus told the woman in Samaria, “The Father seeks such people to worship Him” (John 4:23). This has been the search of the ages. He is looking for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. As soon as you set your heart to worship God, you will find God dealing with you.
The third chapter of Malachi speaks also about the principle of tithing, which most Christians have not understood, even those who practice tithing. We have to learn that tithing is to be a giving in spirit, not a ritual of obedience. We take the firstfruits, the best of our energy, the best of our time, and give it to the Lord.
We may consider the Old Testament as being legalistic, but it can teach us very much that we need to learn about true offerings. God very rarely accepts or smiles upon your offering if you are giving Him the leftovers of your finances. He is not looking for that. The tithe is to be off the top. The worship to the Lord is to be with the best strength you have. At the peak of your energies you are to serve God and worship Him. Do not give Him the leftovers of your day. Do not say your prayers when you are so tired at night that you fall asleep before you get to the Amen. Be alert when you pray. You are to give the Lord the best that you have and meditate upon Him continually. Daniel disciplined himself to give the Lord the best. Three times a day, at the critical hours of the day, he prayed (Daniel 6:10).
God has always required that the firstborn be dedicated to Him. In their youth, in the strength of their life, the best of the generation was to be given to the Lord. He always required the firstborn, and He still does. As firstfruits of the earth today, we, too, will have to learn this; God is requiring that everything we do for Him be the very best. When we learn to give to the Lord the firstfruits of all our increase, of everything that the Lord has given us, then we will learn what His claims upon us are.
In Malachi 1:8a, the prophet spoke about the way the people gave their offerings to the Lord: “But when you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor?” They had defiled the Lord by giving to Him that which was second-rate. In our thinking, nothing is to be short of giving God the first. Tithing should not be a matter of paying all the bills and then giving the Lord an offering. We should place our dedication to the Lord above everything else. He is not only demanding that we be dedicated to Him, but that the dedication be intense. The love we give to the Lord and to each other must be fervent, and from a pure heart.
“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes, and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ Will a man rob God?” Malachi 3:7–8a. The marginal reading in the Bible indicates that the word for rob is “defraud,” and that is the better translation. Our tithing should be a worship from the heart. We are not to make a deal with God as Jacob did, promising to give Him ten percent of everything He gives us. Jacob vowed to give God ten percent if God would look after his interests (Genesis 28:20–22). Yet Jacob did not change his ways. He cheated his father-in-law just as much as he could, and his father-in-law tried to cheat him by changing his wages many times. First Jacob worked seven years to marry Rachel, and Laban deceived him and gave him Leah instead. Then Jacob worked seven more years, and during that time his wages were changed ten times. He told Laban that he would take as payment those of Laban’s flocks that had certain markings on them. Laban agreed, because there were not many of them. Jacob developed a process of acquiring prenatal markings by setting peeled rods before the livestock when they conceived as they came to drink. (We will ask Jacob some day in the Kingdom how it was done, because it is still a mystery.) Greater in number were those that were born with markings, and Laban was tricked again.
At God’s direction, Jacob fled one night with all of his belongings. When Laban pursued him, thinking to do him harm, God warned Laban not to touch Jacob. When Laban caught up with Jacob, they set up a pillar, and Laban named it Mizpah, which means “watchtower.” There they made a covenant, The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another. Genesis 31:49. Although this is used today as a blessing, it was not a friendly blessing then. Jacob was saying, “God keep an eye on you, Laban, that you do not change your mind and come after me in the middle of the night to kill me. God watch between us, so there will be peace between us anyway.” That was the way Jacob did business. Although he was blessed, Jacob never did change until finally he wrestled with the Lord, who changed his name to Israel. What a profound change that was!
In Malachi’s day, the entire nation was cursed with a curse for defrauding the Lord in their tithes and contributions (Malachi 3:8–9). God told them, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house” (the literal reading is not “food” but “prey”; it is not to become a storehouse for food, but a storehouse for the goods that are taken in battle), “and test Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until there is no more need.” Malachi 3:10. The marginal reading is, “not room enough”; there is not room enough to contain it, no place to store it. We should always have the problem that the blessings of the Lord exceed our capacity to receive them. There should always be an overflow. It should never be that we pray and pray and pray and finally receive a partial answer, but not all that we are looking for. It falls a little short of what we were really expecting from the Lord, but we finally settle for it and thank God for the answer, such as it was. We should be able to serve the Lord so joyfully that our cup runs over. There always ought to be an abundance. With every miracle there ought to be twelve baskets left over. In every service there ought to be more than we can receive.
In our relationship to God, He wants us first to be purified like the sons of Levi. Then out of a pure, wholehearted worship to God, we can begin to give. And when we give, it will be like our worship—wholehearted. We must give Him the very best that we can possibly give Him, holding nothing back. This dedication must be deep in our hearts, because the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). It is a human characteristic to move in such deception that we keep little corners and hidden compartments in our hearts to ourselves. In some areas, we have retained the right to our own lives and have not surrendered them to the Lordship of Christ. We hold back, insisting that these areas are of no concern to anyone else. On the surface we appear to be perfectly submissive in everything, but we retain these hidden areas and withhold them from God. We do it unconsciously; we do not want to. It is a part of a self-preservation instinct that seems to be bred within us. This must go because we will never know the abundance of the Lord until we are willing to lose our lives for His sake. When we lay it all on the line, then we begin to receive God’s blessing back again. The tithe has to come from a heart that belongs to the Lord totally and completely. Let us be tithers, not Jacob-style, but Israel-style. There is a big difference.
You cannot tithe from a bargaining position where you give to God, expecting Him to bless you in return. You must really belong to the Lord and give Him your offerings generously with all of your heart. In conventional Christianity, people are encouraged to tithe so that the Lord will bless them in return. A businessman who gives it a try may soon find that the Lord is increasing his business. He believes that because he is a faithful tither, the Lord will continue to bless him in proportion to his giving. That concept may work in traditional Christianity, but it does not work for dedicated believers who walk in the divine pattern. God will never settle for just their tithe. The gospel of the Kingdom demands a total discipleship. He that puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). The standards for today’s dedicated believers are not at all like the standards of the Church age out of which they emerged. In today’s transition period you must enter into a total discipleship, a total dedication, the giving of your whole being to the Lord without reluctance. You cannot bargain with God. Insist that He take what you are and refine you, that your worship be nothing short of a complete and perfect worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you decide to tithe, you should not expect to see the money start rolling in immediately. God may singularly bless you and then test you to see if you will give Him a little more than ten percent, to see if you will give Him your whole heart. Figuratively speaking, He will let elephants stomp on you, rivers flood over you, and mountains fall in your way. He will teach you how to trust Him and look to Him until the windows of heaven are opened, pouring out upon you such a blessing that there is not even room enough to receive it. He wants to make you a vessel of honor in His house, to do for you something far more than Jacob ever experienced. Only Israel experienced it, and thereby he became a prince of God. God wants to make you something more than a bargaining agent through whom He can receive a few shekels. He wants to bless you and make you an instrument in His hand.
The principle of tithing will not work for you according to the traditional Christian concept. It will only work when you make a total commitment to the Lord. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. Then God will open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing, a blessing so great that you will not have room enough to receive it. He will also rebuke the devourer for your sake (Malachi 3:10–11).
When you tithe, it is not how much you have left that counts, but it is how God blesses what you have left. He could pour you out a blessing so great that there would not be room enough to receive it; but if He did not rebuke the devourer, all of it could be “wormy fruit” in a short time. You should be more concerned about the devourer than about the blessing. Many a man could become fairly wealthy in a short time, if he could plug the bottom of the barrel where all of his blessings are leaking out. He may start out with a large gross income, and his net income may even be fairly good, until taxes, medical bills, bad debts, and business reverses eat away at it. That is what God is saying in Haggai 1:6–9: “You have sown much, but harvest little.… and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes.… when you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?” declares the Lord of hosts, “Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house.”
We do not want that to take place; we want the opposite to take place. We want God to rebuke what would devour us and strip us down. After receiving a blessing, we do not want to have it depleted in a short time by spiritual warfare, so that we find ourselves again with nothing, seeking the face of the Lord for enough to sustain us that we might survive in His sight. That is not to be! A church cannot be given to internal war within its midst. It cannot spend all of its energies struggling to throw off the demonic assaults. When our focus is spent on spiritual warfare, we never have time to accomplish the labor of the Lord. We need to enter into a state whereby the inner refining of fire gives us protection. When we worship God and give to God, He smiles upon us and gives us immunities. Then our efforts will be fruitful in the land and we will prevail.
A nation of people cannot use the best of their energies in fighting against each other, without experiencing total destruction. One of the most destructive and diabolical events that ever occurred in the United States was the Civil War. It came at a time when all of the strength and vitality of America could have thrust us immediately into world prominence. If the people, as a country, had taken their destiny seriously and walked in unity, it is possible that they could have prevented World War I, World War II, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of Communism. Much that was detrimental could have been prevented. Slavery was probably a lesser issue than the industrial conflict between the North and the South, in which they bled one another to death. As a country that was torn by civil strife, America was vulnerable to attack by other nations. America could have gone on to her heritage and changed the whole world, if she had not been so foolish as to enter a civil war at the beginning of her growth period.
We must likewise prevent civil war among the brethren. They should not have to spend their efforts praying one another into grace and unity, and praying down conflicts. Let them predetermine to present a united front against Satan, as they cry in one voice for Babylon to come down. When that happens, Babylon will spill out the precious, elect ones who are held captive, and they will begin to flow into the remnant of God to be taught of the Lord. The ranks of the restored New Testament divine order will not grow out of some lighthearted adherence to a Christian cause. They will swell with the people God has chosen. There are many people now imprisoned in Babylon whom God has chosen; but those who are already free will never find them until unitedly, with one voice, they crack the walls of Babylon and see the captives loosed and set free. There is no other way to see this happen.
The remnant of God can struggle along, and finally, little New Testament churches will come forth here and there; but they will not be what God wants them to be until there is a unity of faith. When they become one Body—refined, and united, speaking the Word of the Lord, immune from the onslaught of the devourer—then nothing will be able to make a prey of them, and everything they do will be much more effective. Every Word will go forth like a burning fire to burn up every opposition and sweep before them every limitation that they know today.
You dare not be touchy on this point of unity. There are many problems of divine order that are yet to be worked out among God’s people, but the existence of problems is not an excuse for disunity. Nothing excuses division. It does not make any difference if you cannot get along with a person because of a conflict of personality; you must walk as one anyway. Oneness is a matter of dedication. It is not something that has been reasoned out with diplomacy; it is something that has been ordered by God. It is a divine order. As He sets you in the Body of Christ, you cannot allow anything to interfere. You must determine to be one with each other in the Holy Spirit.
Malachi further prophesied, “And all the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land,” says the Lord of hosts. “Your words have been arrogant against Me,” says the Lord. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against Thee?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His charge, and that we have walked in mourning before the Lord of hosts? So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up, but they also test God and escape.’ ” Malachi 3:12–15.
Those grumblers had a point. Why should God interfere with people’s problems as long as both sides are wrong? In a certain situation, you may protest vehemently, “But I know I’m right! I just know I’m right!” You are right with a wrong spirit, and that is almost as bad as being wrong with a wrong spirit. There is very little difference between the two, because it is the quality of spirit that counts. When you see the arrogant, you may get a bad spirit and wonder why God does not deal with them. You wonder why God does not catch the doers of wickedness in their sins. Fear would be upon the world if God started smiting down the wicked every time they did anything wrong. Visualize what it would be like if God did that for a period of twenty-four hours straight: every time a thief pulled a gun and held up a bank, he would drop dead; every couple committing adultery would drop dead immediately; every arrogant man, when he put his hand into the till to rob the company, would drop dead right there; every time a man cheated on his income tax, he would drop dead; every time a man murdered someone, he would fall dead along with the victim. It sounds drastic, but do you realize that the ruling rod of iron that is coming in the Kingdom may include that? The fear of God is going to be on the land.
The arrogant people may seem to be blessed. They seem to escape while no one cares or pays much attention. There is a reason for this seeming injustice. If someone wrongs you and you pray with a bad spirit as though vengeance were yours, then when God starts judging the wrong in that situation, He will not only judge the one who wronged you, but He will also judge you for your wrong reaction.
What is the Sermon on the Mount all about? Isn’t it simply the principles of the Kingdom? If people want to take something from you, give it to them. Why? God is more concerned about your spirit being right than about what people can do to you. If your spirit is right and your reactions are right, and you turn the other cheek when you are wronged instead of becoming furious and antagonistic, then there is only one wrong person in the situation. If you love your enemy and do good to him, even though he is doing bad to you, then God can deal with the wrong party in the situation. At the present time, the arrogant can escape because everyone is a little bit wrong. If there were Ananias-and-Sapphira situations of judgment in churches now, there would not be any churches left. It would affect not only one or two people, but nearly everyone. God is crying for the day when people will come with a right spirit, so that He can start dealing with the injustices and the wrongs.
“Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Romans 12:19b. After your obedience is brought to the full, then God is in readiness to judge every disobedient thing. But He is waiting until your obedience is complete (II Corinthians 10:6). If He did not wait, He would have to deal with you too; but the minute that you are obedient and your spirit is right, then He can start dealing with the situation. God can deal with those who persecute you when you have a right spirit about it. Then it is not in your hands, because you have committed it to the Lord.
The early Church had to have a right spirit. If they had become angry at people who persecuted them, and started going against them viciously, then they would have found themselves praying against Saul of Tarsus, asking God to kill him. Instead, some of them grew to maturity under the apostolic ministry that originally had destroyed members of their own family. They had a right spirit. How terrible it is to be wrong with a wrong spirit. It is better to be wrong with a right spirit than right with a wrong spirit. But best of all is being right with a right spirit.
Then those who feared the Lord (who had a reverence of heart for Him) spoke to one another, and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name. (This is speaking about having a right spirit and beautiful worship.) “And they will be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts, “on the day that I prepare My own possession” (the King James Version reads “jewels”; these are the precious things), “and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.” So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him. Malachi 3:16–18.
The people complained that serving God was in vain because the arrogant and the wicked were never judged. There was never a clear-cut decision or judgment in anything that happened. When God’s people have a right spirit, then they will begin to see the difference in God’s dealings upon the man who is righteous and the man who is not righteous, upon the man who serves Him and the man who does not serve Him. Now there is no visible, clear-cut decisiveness in the Lord’s dealings; however, He will deal decisively when His people have a right spirit and are out of the situation. The judgment of God cannot return to this earth until there are people with a right spirit to administer it. Those who have a vindictive spirit will hold back the process. God will very kindly stay out of situations and not answer any prayer until the people who are calling for justice have a right spirit themselves. God’s people are to loose the Kingdom on this earth; therefore, every truth that He reveals must search their own hearts and prepare them to do what He wants them to do, and to be what He wants them to be.
God says that the day is coming when His worshipers, His chosen ones, will speak upon His name. They will not get together and talk about their grievances; they will talk about the Lord and honor His name. Their spirits will be right because they have been refined in the fire, and their worship will be pure before God; no impurities will stand in the way. Nothing that is done to them will make their spirits bitter. No matter what comes against them, they will worship God. That is the mark of a pure worshiper. It is the mark of a man like Job.
When Job was told that his family was dead, what did he do? He bowed down and worshiped the Lord. He said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). He worshiped God. Scratch a bitter man, and he exudes bitterness like a poison. Wound a worshiper, and nothing but worship flows out to God. Such a man God will bless and vindicate. Job finally received a double portion. So, also, the people in the latter day who have a right spirit will receive the double portion of blessing. There will not be room enough to contain it. God will be able to entrust riches, authority, and power to them. These will be kings and priests who have been through the refining fire of the Lord and who know how to worship and serve Him. They will know how to react to anything that comes against them—with the hide of a rhinoceros, but the heart of a dove.
This must be within our spirits. We cannot use intercession as a voice of frustration and vindictiveness. It cannot be that people with a wrong spirit set themselves in any way to judge anyone else in the family of God, no matter how wrong the other person may be; that is not the issue.
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” Malachi 4:1. God will bring an end to wickedness. There will be no more branches bearing fruit that will seed another generation of evildoers. There will not even be a root remaining to nourish them or cause them to survive.
“But for you who fear My name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings” (a better translation would be “healing in its rays”); “and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. And you will tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 4:2–3. We are closer to seeing the fulfillment of that than we know.
How long does it take to get a right spirit? Changes in spirit can happen instantly. How long does it take to get something negative out of your spirit? If you allow it to wear itself out, it acts like a period of convalescence; you get over it in slow degrees. You may never recover. A man may live his entire life with symptoms of bitterness, remembering that someone wronged him. What happened to him did not warrant the reaction within him. He did it to himself; it came from his own filthy spirit. A woman may be bitter and vicious all her life, hating everyone, just because her boyfriend jilted her when she was a teenager. Things that happened in the days of her immaturity do not warrant a lifetime of bitterness.
You had better face the many things that have happened to your spirit that you are responsible for. You are not responsible for what people do to you, but you are responsible for your reaction to it. You are responsible for a wrong spirit. You are responsible for your own jealousies, your own fears, your own reactions, your own bitterness, your own criticism. You are responsible for not laying the situation in the hands of the Lord.
How long does it take to get a right spirit? Just as long as you want it to take. Is your spirit right? Proverbs 20:27 says that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching the innermost parts of his being. You have a way of knowing whether or not your spirit is right.
The psalmist, David, prayed, Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23–24. That is beautiful, but it is an Old Testament process. The Apostle Paul gave the instruction, “Let a man examine himself, when he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup” (I Corinthians 11:28). When you come to the Communion Table, you do not ask God to search your heart. You know what is the matter with you. In this day, the spotlight of the Holy Spirit is shining on it. God’s finger is touching each area that needs to be changed. You know your need, but how long will it take you to meet it? Maybe you can talk a big fight, but you have to go a little further than talk.
Are you one of those whom God has been refining in the fire? Is your offering of worship a pure sacrifice to the Lord? Are you one who is learning how to put God first and give to God first? You may have thought it vain to serve the Lord because He does not seem to put His hand to certain situations. Pray for the Lord to give you a right spirit as you look for the day in which the Lord will deal with the arrogant and the proud, the day when the wicked will be like ashes under your feet. We are waiting for the day when we will see the difference between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve God. Then God will no longer look down at the world and the Church and decide that He cannot do anything, because if He judges the evil He will have to destroy everyone.
In His long-suffering, God is looking for a remnant. Let us be that remnant that gives God the occasion for bringing judgment. Let us rid ourselves of a wrong spirit and get a right spirit, God’s Spirit. How long will it take? Answer that for yourself. Search your heart and judge your problem; then lay it before God. Make sure that your spirit is right. Jump right into God’s fire, and He will refine you as the sons of Levi are refined, as the gold and silver are refined in the fire. The Lord will purify you and put an end to the impurities.
There is nothing that says your release cannot be instantaneous. It depends upon your diligence in surrendering those impurities. If you give them all to the Lord in faith, He will take care of all of them right now. If you give Him a few things, He will refine you in those areas. Open your heart to Him. He will do as much as you allow Him to do. That is the purpose of the fire—to make you willing. In the final analysis, the fire only makes you willing to let Him refine you. The big fish did not make Jonah a mighty prophet. God blessed Jonah and brought him forth as a prophet after he became willing, through God’s dealings, to be a prophet. God is dealing with you to make you willing. What do you have need of? Do you want it done now? Do you have problems that you have lived with for a long time? Can He take care of them for you now?
Have you ever noticed that when people are converted, they drop many of their habits instantly? But some they do not drop. One person gives his heart to the Lord, and from that time on he does not smoke or drink; but he swears a little, and he still has a bad temper. Another person is delivered from alcoholism and a bad temper, but he still smokes. If God has saved them both, why doesn’t He do a complete miracle in both of them? He saves us to the uttermost because He ever lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). Then why doesn’t He save a person to the uttermost immediately? He can save you only from the things that you surrender to Him. One person may want to give up smoking and drinking, but he feels that the temper is part of his personality, and so he does not give that up. Another person does not want to give up smoking, but he wants to give up drinking because he believes it is destroying him. You can instantly get rid of what you are prepared to get rid of. Maybe you have prayed and prayed about cigarettes, but you cannot get rid of the smoking habit. You never will until you want to. If you want it all done now, if you really want it done, God will do it for you immediately. It will take just as long as it takes for you to become willing to commit it to the Lord.
Why is it that someone can walk along with God and still have one or two glaring faults hanging on? He wonders why everyone else seems to have the victory over an area where he is defeated. God has done wonderful things for him, but this one fault stands. And it will continue to stand until he wants it dealt with, until he comes to hate it as much as God hates it. Then he will ask God to deal with it, and He will. With grace abounding as it does now, you have no excuse. The grace of God is not given to overlook; it is given to help you overcome. You can overcome by the blood of the Lamb. You can become totally new, totally renewed in God, totally changed. You can be a person with a right spirit. You can be what God has called you to be. It is up to you to do it now.