… On the night when Judas betrayed him, the Lord Jesus took bread,
and when he had given thanks to God for it, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said,
“Take this and eat it. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.”
In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new agreement between God and you
that has been established and set in motion by my blood.
Do this in remembrance of me whenever you drink it.”
1 Corinthians 11:23b-25 Living Bible
“Jesus Christ was made broken bread and poured-out wine for us,
and He expects us to be made broken bread and poured-out wine in His hands for others.”
(Oswald Chambers)
We say, “If God would only use His own fingers,
and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!”
But when He uses someone we dislike,
or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object.
Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom.
If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed—you cannot drink grapes.
(Oswald Chambers)
I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you?
Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped?
If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway,
the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter.
To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience
the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service.
We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him
before we can be broken bread in His hands.
Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes,
and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children. (Oswald Chambers)
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When God places us in the winepress, the process is never easy.
You can’t have the bread until it is first broken.
You can’t have the wine without first crushing the grape.
Am I willing to be broken bread and poured-out wine for Him?