In some ways this verse sums up what it means to Drill Down. God is the fire, refining our salted offerings intended for His consumption.
Drilling Down exposes our temporal, earthly soul to eternality a n d submits our body to the probing Holy Spirit surfacing soiled habits. This is sin residue not yet redeemed and a grace offering we make as our covenant of salt/grace. Putting to death sin in our body is one of our primary callings in Christ. As the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to put sin upon our personal alter of sacrifice. The vapors rising from this sacrifice are a sweet fragrance glorifying God while purifying our own soul.
Salvation is a God ordained covenant of grace. The change is so profound it is impossible to verbalize. We not only know within ourselves, but in most cases, others notice as well and wonder what happened to us. But this is just the beginning. It is a glorious path leading into the riches of God’s grace in Christ Jesus. Through our salted sacrifices, purified by God’s own fire we are able to explore riches we all ready possess in Christ Jesus!
Many believers hit the couch after being created new in Christ. They may spend time learning about their salvation, learning chapter and verse but neglecting treasures waiting through intimacy with Him. Drilling Down is intended to bring our focus into His intimacy, spiritual intimacy. “Salted with fire” is one opportunity to bring us into a focus of intimacy.
Being “born again” places us literally “in Christ”. A very intimate place to be! We are a new creation but the old humanity lingers within our body. We literally become something we were not before and are now equipped to put to death the residue sin in our body with the resurrection power of Jesus Who is now physically within us. We are not only in Christ but Christ is in us.
The “new creation” occurs within the core of our being, in our essence. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians our spirit is joined to God’s Holy Spirit, 1Corinthinas 6:17. This is not figurative language, it exposes the spiritual anatomy we acquire “in Christ”.
John Fletcher (1729 – 1785) in his short collection of letters to a parishioner documents from scripture a “spiritual sense” added to the believer’s soul. The believer in Christ receives capacity for spiritual intimacy with our risen Lord. The Holy Spirit begins to manifest the person of Jesus in an experiential way in each believer. This typical means using scripture for communion with God. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
The word for discernment in the Greek refers to exactly what John Fletcher is talking about. It is a word to describe a spiritual sense, just like an ear to hear or an eye to see. We are able to process spiritual things which make no sense whatever to those who are not in Christ.
Drilling Down opens our heart’s door so Jesus can come in, sit at our table and fellowship about the reality of eternal things in Him, Revelation 3:20. Jesus desires to disclose Himself to us because we have entered into His grace where we now stand. His love has been lavishly poured into our hearts so we can be an extension of His life on earth. It is a process of growing in Him continually until He takes us out of this worldly system.
He has given us His life, His love, His righteousness. Now it is up to our commitment to will our heart, mind and soul into what He has already provided.
He is the reason He made man and woman. The passion a man and woman experience for each other is one of many earthly shadows of His divine realities. Our temporal experience stencils a spiritual discipline producing His love in us. We are intended to be in love. We were created the first time out of love, and it is in love we are now able to grow intimately in Him.
Love between husbands and wives have qualitative differences but always relate to commitment levels, not toward ourselves, but toward our beloved. When death is no longer a sacrifice but a desire to satisfy another, then the other person is more important than we are to our own self. It is then our love matures to the deepest intimate levels. This is the way spiritual intimacy works. Jesus is our beloved. He has given Himself for us. His love is driving our new creation in Him and will pull us into spiritual intimacy if we commit to it. The level of spiritual intimacy correlates to spiritual discipline.
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 31:3b
“’And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” Mark 12:30-31
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1Corinthians 13:1-3
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:2
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:11-12
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus or Lord.” – Romans 8:37-39