The joy of our first meeting the Lord is unforgettable. We may think that encounter is the end of our salvation experience. But God’s full salvation is not accomplished in an instant; it is a “pickling” process that takes time to be fulfilled. On the one hand, we are changed the moment we are first saved; on the other hand, we are being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). Consider Abraham’s experience: he was 75 years old when God first showed Himself to him and said that He would make Abraham “a great nation” (Gen. 12:2). But 25 years and many experiences would pass before that promise would begin to be fulfilled. Throughout that time, God repeatedly visited Abraham, carrying on a process of “saving” him, changing him from the inside out, by transfusing and permeating Himself into him.
God has an unchanging purpose from the beginning to the end of the Bible for His people to contain, express, and be one with Him. In between, we see their messy lives, full of sin and failures, and also the transformation that emerges through God’s salvation. He puts us in a slow, “pickling” process to expose us and also show us who He is. God’s salvation works in every detail of a believer’s life. To us, decades of time might seem long and slow, but God has infinite time and space to operate within, for “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). Our life, comparably, is like that of an ant, miniscule and insignificant. But the Lord graciously comes into our temporal existence, redeeming our time by appearing and operating to deposit something eternal in us.
Today, the church life is where we can continue our full salvation experience in this “pickling” process with the Lord. When we open to Him, receive Him, eat of Him, and are permeated by Him, His victorious life then becomes our life through this transfusing process. What we lack, He is. What we need, He has. Through this long and thorough process, God and man become one.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 7/7/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)