In this devotional message, the speaker encourages listeners who are experiencing a "wilderness season"—a period of spiritual hardship and pruning. He explains that such seasons are divinely intended to reveal another facet of God's character and require a death of fleshly habits. Using the detailed metaphor of a caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly, he describes how the creature sheds its outer layers, enters a chrysalis where it decomposes into a goop-like state, and is rebuilt from imago cells that contain the blueprint for the butterfly. This process illustrates the Christian belief that believers must die to their old nature so that the image of Christ can be formed within them. The speaker emphasizes that the process is painful and not everyone endures it, but those who do emerge transformed, resembling Jesus more fully.
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Hey, I want to encourage you today. If you are going through a wilderness season, it's because the Lord wants you to know another facet of his character. And there is not knowing him without something in us dying. There needs to be a death to that something in us that hinders us from knowing him, from knowing him deeply, from knowing him in a deeper way, from knowing that side of his character. So I just wanted to encourage you that if you find yourself in this season of crushing, pruning, season that feels like death, feels like you're dying, it's because something in you is dying. Something that belongs to the flesh is dying in you, and you will be transformed through this season. Seasons of wilderness are for our good, or to equip us, to form us, to mold us, and for us to shed those parts of our soul that need to go in order for us to go deeper into intimacy with Jesus. You know, a caterpillar, before it encloses itself in the chrysalis where the metamorphosis happens, It sheds 4 or 5 times the outer layer of its body, and once it's ready, it encloses itself in the chrysalis. And in the chrysalis, the caterpillar decomposes. It becomes mucus. It becomes goop. The old creation is completely gone. Nothing resembles the caterpillar anymore. The only thing left are these little cells called imago cells. Imago cells. from the Latin word that means image. And that little cell contains the blueprint of what the butterfly is going to look like— the size, the color of the wings, the designs on the wings, the antennas, the eyes, everything. Everything that pertains to butterfly is contained in that little cell that is named image. And that is such an incredible picture of what a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ goes through in order to become Like him, to resemble Jesus. We need to die to the flesh. Everything that was the old creation needs to die in order to be rebuilt from the ground up. Every little brick, every little part of us is going to resemble Jesus. The blueprint is in us. The potential to look like Jesus is in us. But not everybody yields to the process. Not everybody gets to become a butterfly. Not everybody gets to come out of the chrysalis as a butterfly. Not everybody has the strength to go through that process. It's the most painful process you will ever go through. And once a butterfly is ready, it needs time for the blood to start pumping in those wings and gain strength and
