Let me set forth the whole matter by an illustration, We will suppose the case of a man who loves violin music. He has the means to buy for himself a very fine violin, and he also purchases the very best radio obtainable. He builds up a library of the great musical scores, so that he is able to take any piece that is announced on the radio, put it on his music stand, and play along with the orchestra. The announcer says that Mr. Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra are going to play Beethoven’s seventh symphony. The man in his home puts that symphony on his stand and tunes his violin with what he hears coming from the orchestra. The music that comes from the radio we might call foreordained. Ormandy is going to follow the score just as Beethoven wrote it. The man in his living room starts to scratch away at the first violin part. He misses beats, he loses his place and finds it again, he breaks a string and stops to fix it. The music goes on and on. He finds the place again and plays on after his fashion to the end of the symphony, The announcer names the next work that is to be played and the
fiddler puts that number on his rack. Day after week after month after year, he finds his pleasure in scraping his fiddle along with the violins in the great orchestras. Their music is determined in advance. What he must do is to learn to play in their tempo, in their key, and to follow the score as it has been written in advance, if he decides that he wants to play Yankee Doodle when the orchestra is in the midst of a Brahms number, there is going to be dissonance and discord in the man’s house but not in the Academy of Music. After some years of this the man may be a rather creditable violin player and may have learned to submit himself utterly to the scores that are written and to follow the programs as played. Harmony and joy comes from this submission and this cooperation.
So it is with the plan of God. It is rolling toward us, unfolding day by day, as He has planned it before the foundation of the world. There are those who fight against it and who must ultimately be cast into outer darkness because He will not have in His Heaven those who proudly resist Him. This cannot be tolerated any more than the authorities would permit a man to bring his own violin into the Academy of Music and start to play Shostakovich when the program called for Bach. The score of God’s plan is set forth in the Bible. In the measure that I learn it, submit myself to it, and seek to live in accordance with all that is therein set forth, I shall find myself in joy and in harmony with God and His plans. If I set myself to fight against it, or disagree with that which comes forth, there can be no peace in my heart and life. If in my heart I seek to play a tune that is not the melody that the Lord has for me, there can be nothing but dissonance. Prayer is learning to play the same tune that the eternal plan of God calls for and to do that which is in harmony with the will of the Eternal Composer and the Author of all that is of true harmony in life and living. Barnhouse – Romans Vol I – Man’s Ruin – pp 122-123 (Of our stubborn self-pride that keeps man from the confession to God that would bring release, but that way he refuses to take.) “Man stands before God today like a little boy who swears, with crying and tears that he has not been anywhere near the jam jar, and who with an air of outraged innocence, pleads the justice of his position, in total ignorance of the fact that a good spoonful of the jam has fallen on his shirt under his chin and is plainly visible to all but himself.” – D.G. Barnhouse –
Dr. Barnhouse has written something very insightful about the process of separation and growing up in the Lord; He said…
“The true Christian never has to give up anything (of course I am not speaking of sins), but there are a lot of things that will give him up. They will go one by one. There will be no grief. It will be the way childish occupations are abandoned. I never had to give up playing with tops and marbles. I never had to come to the place where I said, “O I am a big boy now, and big boys shouldn’t play marbles. So I will make a great effort to give up playing marbles.” It did not happen that way.
One day I was playing marbles with a group of small boys and some older boys came by. They looked at me and said, “Hey, kid, can you field a ball?” “Sure I can,” I replied with more vigor than accuracy. “Well,” they said, “we are short a fielder. Get out there and see what you can do.” I went out and was ready to play my head off to keep
up with the older fellows. When it was my turn to bat I was ready to swing till I burst, and to run till I dropped, and do all that I could to keep up with the bigger company I was in. And when the game was over and we older boys, as I then classed myself, walked down the street past the little fellows who were playing marbles, I did not go back to marbles. I had graduated. I did not give up marbles, marbles gave me up.”
-Barnhouse – Romans Vol I – Man’s Ruin – pp 18,19