God can never make me wine if I object to the fingers he uses to crush me. If God would only crush me with his own fingers, and say, “Now, my son, I am going to make you broken bread and poured out wine in a particular way, and everyone will know what I am doing.” But when he uses someone who is not a Christian, or someone I particularly dislike, or some set of circumstances which I said I would never submit to, and begins to make these the crushers, I object.

I must never choose the scene of my own martyrdom, nor must I choose the things God will use in order to make me broken bread and poured out wine. His own Son did not choose. God chose for his Son that he should have a devil in his company for three years. We say, “I want angels; I want people better than myself; I want everything to be significantly from God; otherwise I cannot live the life, or do the thing properly; I always want to be gilt-edged.”

Let God do as he likes. If you are ever going to be wine to drink, you must be crushed. Grapes cannot be drunk; grapes are only wine when they have been crushed. I wonder what kind of coarse finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine that came out would have been remarkably bitter. Let God go on with his crushing, because it will work his purpose in the end.