If God has called you to really be
like Jesus in all your spirit, He will
draw you into a like 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 wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans,
but you
can not do it; and if you attempt it, 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, and
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 be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money,
or having a
legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may supply
you daily,
because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and
that is a
helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the
privilege of providing
your needs day by day out of the unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honoured, and put forward, and keep
you hid away
in obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant
fruit for
His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.
God will let others be great, but keep you small, He will let
others do work
for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you work for
Him, and
toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make
your work
still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the
work which
you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater
when Jesus
comes.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, with a jealous
love, and
will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your
time,
which other Christians never seemed distressed over.
So make up your mind that God is an Infinite Sovereign, and has a
right to
do as he pleases with his own, and He will not explain to you a
thousand
things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.
God will take you at your word; and if you absolutely sell
yourself to be
His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other
people say
and do many things that you cannot do or say.
Settle if forever, that you are to deal directly with the Holy
Spirit, and
that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or
chaining your
hand, or 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 His peculiar, personal,
private,
jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your
life, you
will have found the vestibule of heaven.
Anon