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Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
If God has called you to be really like Christ 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.
Others can brag on themselves, and 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 you good
works.
The Lord will let others be honored and put forward,
and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some
choice fragrant fruit for His glory, which can be produced only in the
shade.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making money,
but it is likely God will keep you poor 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 supplying your needs day by day - out
of an unseen treasury.
God will let others be great, but He will keep you
small. He will let others do a great work for Him and get 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 will let
others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make
your reward ten times greater when He comes.
The Holy Spirit will put 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 seem distressed
over.
So make up your mind that God is an infinite
Sovereign, and has a right to do what He pleases with His own, and He
will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason
in His dealing with you. 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 it 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 this
particular personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the
Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.
~G. D. Watson~
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Romans 14:12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
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