Colossians 1:24

The suggestion is this: all ministry for the Master must be possessed of the sacrificial spirit of the Master. If Paul is to help in the redemption of Rome, he must himself incarnate the death of Calvary. If he is to be a minister of Life, he must “die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31 KJV). The spirit of Calvary is to be reincarnate in Ephesus, in Athens, in Rome . . . the sacrificial succession is to be maintained through the ages, and we are to “fill up in [our] flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions.”

Here, then, is a principle: the gospel of a broken heart demands the ministry of bleeding hearts. As soon as we cease to bleed, we cease to bless. When our sympathy loses its pangs, we can no longer be the servants of the Passion. I do not know how any Christian service is to be fruitful if the servant is not primarily baptized in the spirit of a suffering compassion. We can never heal the needs we do not feel. Tearless hearts can never be the heralds of the Passion. We must bleed if we would be the ministers of the saving blood. We must, by our own suffering sympathies, “fill up in [our] flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions.”

We make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we get right with God He brushes all these aside, and rivets us with a pain that is terrific to one thing we never dreamed of, and for one radiant flashing moment we see what He is after, and we say - "Here am I, send me."

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

The Christian worker has to be a sacramental "go-between," to be so identified with his Lord and the reality of His Redemption that He can continually bring His creating life through him.

It is not the strength of one man's personality being superimposed on another, but the real presence of Christ coming through the elements of the worker's life.