Homegrown Thoughts

Sometimes our prayers are for deliverance from conditions which are morally indispensable — that is, conditions which are absolutely necessary to our redemption. God does not grant us these requests. He will not because He loves us with a pure and implacable purpose: that Christ be formed in us. If Christ is to live in my heart, if His life is to be lived in me, I will not be able to contain Him. The self, small and hard and resisting as a nut, will have to be ruptured. My own purposes and desires and hopes will have to at times be exploded. The rupture of the self is death, but out of death comes life. The acorn must rupture if an oak tree is to grow. — Elisabeth Elliott