The High Calling
If God has called you to be really like Jesus in all your spirit…He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.
Other Christians and ministers, who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves, pull strings, and work schemes to carry out their plans. But you cannot do such things. You will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.
Others can brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
Others will succeed in making great sums of money, having a legacy left to them, or having luxuries. However, God may supply you daily, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, that is helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of providing your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, but keep you hid away in obscurity. He does this to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be grown in the shade. He may let others be great but keep you small. He may let others do a work for Him and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without letting you have any knowledge of how much you are doing. Then to make you still more precious, He will let others got the credit for the work you have done. This will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus returns.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you with a jealous love. He will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time. Things that other Christians never seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with his own.
He may not explain to you a thousand things, which may puzzle your reasoning in His dealing with you. God will take you at your work. If you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love. He will let other people say and do many things that you cannot say or do.
Settle it forever, you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit. He alone has the privilege of tying your tongue, chaining your hand and closing your eyes in ways that others are not dealt with. Now, when you are so possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.
What stood out to you from this poem?
Umm...speechless...all I can say is POWERFUL, MOVING. Lord, have your way. Though it may hurt, have your way. If it's hard...still, have your way. This is surrender and living a crucified life. Ouch. The flesh and all its little tickle-me-now wants has to die.
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