We are going to be squeezed. What are we made of and how do we react when squeezed? If we are hard and brittle, then we break and end up as many sharp pieces that are useless. If we are soft and pliable like the grape, we give off a liquid that can become wine.
Now we need to answer two questions: How are we being squeezed and how are we reacting?
To answer the first one we remember that Paul told the Romans, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold but let God remold your minds from within.” The world is trying to squeeze you into its mold. Everywhere we turn we are being bombarded by the media telling us what to buy, where to go, what to think and how to get ahead in this world. When Paul wrote his letter there were no newspapers, magazines, radio or television and even then he found it necessary to warn us not to let the world squeeze us into its mold. Today we really do have to be careful, for on every side and at every turn the world is putting pressure on us to conform to its standards.
The verse continues, “but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all His demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity.” So there is a battle going on. We are being squeezed from two directions. We need to decide if it is the world that is winning the battle of the squeeze by pressing us into its mold or God who is trying to reach us to remold our minds from within.
So the answer to the first question is we are squeezed constantly either by the world and its thinking or by God and His thinking.
What should be our reaction to being squeezed? If we are hard and brittle we will break, if we remain soft and pliable then we can take it.
Being soft means we are vulnerable, so we must be on our guard not to allow ourselves to be mixed up with worldly things. Paul tells us, “to flee idolatry, to flee fornication, to flee youthful lusts,” and James instructs us to “resist the devil and he will flee from us.” We need to pray, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” David said, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”
The world cannot put the squeeze on us unless we place ourselves within its grasp. We know that it will try to squeeze us into its mold, but if we flee from it then we can be free from its pressures to make us conform to its standards. We can take comfort that our Heavenly Father will never allow us to be squeezed beyond that which we are able to bear but in His hands we can become a thing of beauty for Him. “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and you our potter; and all we are the work of your hand.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One