UNQUALIFIED OBEDIENCE NECESSARY TO ACCOMPLISH HIS PLEASURE

UNQUALIFIED OBEDIENCE NECESSARY TO ACCOMPLISH HIS PLEASURE

May you enter on this another year in confidence in the Lord, that He will enable you to be according to His pleasure in the duties and services to which He has called you. Your duties and services are well defined, and you are in every way competent to discharge them. The Lord fits us for the duty or mission to which He has called us. But however fit as to natural qualities, you are to answer to His mind. There are two things absolutely required in order that you may accomplish His pleasure: one is unqualified obedience to His word, and the other is His ^[p. 86] own sympathies while executing it. If you have not unqualified obedience you are not subject, you are not reliable as a servant; and if you do not work in His compassions, you misrepresent Him. To render unqualified obedience we must have no will of our own. You must not exercise your own judgment as to whether it is wise or right; if really subject, you obey to the letter. If like Jonah you swerve from it, and in unbelief evade it, you are sure to fall into greater difficulties than you would have encountered if you were obedient. You as a rule have perception or light enough to see what you are called to. Your danger is that you would evade it, because you yield too much to your own idea of prudence; but surely the greater your light or perception, the more you require to be obedient to the word of the Lord. “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14: 15). True love is always controlled by its object. Where you would naturally least like to serve, there the Lord will be most honoured, if you serve fully and in His compassions. May you not avoid difficulties, but be able to say, “By my God have I leaped over a wall” (Psalm 18: 29).