BEGIN AT GOD'S HOUSE

BEGIN AT GOD’S HOUSE

I have no doubt that while you are going on humbly, patiently, silently with prayer to God a door will be given to you. You must, like Nehemiah, be too busy ^[p. 471] with the work of the Lord pressing upon you to give your attention to things or people in the plains of Ono. I see in Psalm 84, however disconcerted or distracted one is, as a sparrow or a swallow, the place to begin here is God’s house. Begin there, and come from there to this scene of sorrow and distraction, and then you will be able to serve. Thus the Lord comforts the disciples and provides for them. At the supper table inside with Himself He gives them His own peace, and adds, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14: 27). May this be a comfort to you!

I feel that in all cases of ministering there should be faith, each giving in direct confidence as to the Lord. I lament that there is a readiness to look to the servant and not to the Lord simply. It is damaging as turning one aside from faith, and dictating to the gifted man how he is to use his gift instead of leaving him in the Lord’s hands as to direction and support.

How little we are prepared to suffer! We are ready to preach or visit or work; but how little that the sufferings of Christ may abound in us! There is a danger to every servant in being too much confined spiritually to his own line of work. If an evangelist hears nothing and seeks nothing but the beginning of the gospel, he does not gain ground for himself, and he is not exercised in his soul. I have noticed that we may see the light and beauty of a truth, and yet from want of experimental knowledge of it one may think that it can be enjoyed in any state. I see in Corinthians that if you allow the flesh in the mind as they did, you are sure to reign as kings here. You cannot receive the things which God has prepared - they are beyond human conception, and you seek the things of earth which suit man.

Alas! how truly this describes the state of many!