DYING TO SELF
Posted by: amazinggraze <amazinggraze@...>
DYING TO SELF (Author Not Given)
When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you
don't sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is
happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice
disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in
your heart, or even defend yourself, but take in all in patient, loving
silence.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any
unpunctuality, or any annoyance; when you stand face-to- face with waste,
folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility-and endure it as Jesus endured.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you are content with any food, any offering, any climate, any society,
any raiment, any interruption by the will of God.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your
own good works, or itch after commendations, when you can truly love to be
unknown.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can
honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God,
while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than
yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no
rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
Are you dead yet? In these last days, the Spirit would bring us to the
cross.
"That I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship
of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." Phil.3:10
OTHERS MAY YOU CANNOT !
If God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you into a life
of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience,
that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by
other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other 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
cannot 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 may boast of themselves, of their work, of their successes, of 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 may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left
to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to
have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence upon Him,
that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an
unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in
obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His
coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be
great, but keep you small. He may let others do a work for Him and get the
credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how
much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He may
let others get credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your
reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and
will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time,
which other Christians never feel 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. He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in
His dealings with you, but if you absolutely sell yourself to be his love
slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and bestow upon you many
blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.
Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit,
and that He must have the right to tie your tongue, or chain your hand, or
close your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others. 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 management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have
found the vestibule of Heaven.
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