Purification and Service

To offer the living God a living service, we need a deeper cleansing. Cleansing not only from evil deeds, but also from dead works. Heb. 9:14.

Every song that we do not sing in the spirit, every prayer that is not prayed in spirit and truth, yes, every service for God that is not driven by the Spirit is a dead work, from which we must be cleansed in the blood of Jesus, so that we can serve God with the mind and spirit by which God has offered Himself as a sacrifice.

The Holy Spirit is a spirit of sacrifice. In this spirit of sacrifice Christ shed His blood to cleanse us from our dead works, which are born of self-seeking and selfishness, and by which we cannot serve the living God in a way that is pleasing to Him. Everything that is of our self-life is just death and corruption and can never be pleasing to God.

If we continue to serve God without a sacrificial spirit, it is like bringing corpses into the sanctuary.

Conversely, service itself sanctifies us for service, and perhaps nothing is better suited to lead us to a deeper cleansing from selfishness than service itself.

God gives everyone, He calls to His service, the same task He gave Moses at the burning bush. God said to Moses, “Put your hand in your bosom again.” What a discovery, “his hand was leprous—white as snow.” What did God mean by this? He wanted to tell him: Everything that comes out of your bosom is like your hand. It was a very humbling lesson. Brother, put your hand in your bosom, then pull it out. How is it today? Leprous—white as snow. Now do you know what to expect from yourself? Can you still boast of your love and uprightness, etc.?

Can you still give up on others and consider them useless? No, before Isaiah could cry in woe over the apostate people, before he could say about others: “You’re lost,” he first had to shout about himself: “I’m lost.” As long as we have not learned this lesson, we are wholly unfit for service in the Kingdom of God. We must have learned like Paul, that in me—that is, in my flesh—dwells no good thing.

Then the condition for our service requires a signed death sentence over ourselves.

I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake, said the Most High about his servant Paul. Acts 9:16.

Service brings suffering, deep suffering, inner suffering and struggles to the soul, as Paul says:

“Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?”

We suffer from the inadequacy of our service, it is precisely there that we will most feel the truth of the statement that the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and these things are contrary one to another. For service is spiritual and I am carnal. One day Joshua met his people in the camp at Gilgal with flint knives to cleanse them of their selfish nature. The next day God met him before the walls of Jericho with a sword to cleanse him of his selfish nature. Joshua 5. In this way our service leads us into a deeper death, into an ever-deeper cleansing from ourselves, and the effect of this cleansing is a more abundant fruitfulness. David says in Psalm 23, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over.” But only after we have passed through the valley of the shadow of death, only after our nature has passed through the death of the cross, can God prepare a table, anoint my head with the oil of gladness, and make our cup run over.

Let us therefore not resist deeper cleansing, for it is necessary for our service, and let us not forsake our service, for it leads to deeper cleansing.

It was through this ministering service that God could change the hot-tempered Moses into a man who was able to bear a whole nation; a man whom He could rely on. The man Moses was very meek, more than all the people on earth. We see he received a good testimony for his service. For it is said of him that there had not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. Deut. 34:10.