DEPENDENCE ON GOD IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED WITH SELF-DENIAL
[p. 139] DEPENDENCE ON GOD IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED WITH SELF-DENIAL
In remembering all the way in which we are led, it is good to examine where we have permitted the crab shoot to grow, and which, when not rubbed off in the bud, must be torn down, or eventually sawn off with deep suffering to the tree.
The fact of a place being arduous, is no reason for your taking the initiative in order to find an easier berth. The very arduousness was the needed thing for you, and instead of looking for strength to go on, you looked for a gap through which you might escape, and you found one; and now you find yourself confronted by a greater hedge, and one requiring more mettle or faith to surmount it. The Lord must exercise souls, and where there is dependence on Him as to purpose, He takes care that there shall be dependence practically, too; and hence if we will not learn it when first proposed to us, He gives us a loose rein and easier circumstances, but the test - the difficulty - comes up again. We must learn that our power is in Him, and that in His power we can do all things. I am daily learning that if I am true as to dependence on God, it will be seen by denying myself. That is, there is always less self-consideration, truer self-denial, as one is more dependent on God. I want less for myself and think less for myself in every way, as I am more simply cast on God; I am provided for by His hand, and I have fewer wants and less self-thought.
Self may come out in putting too much confidence in others. Every confidence is false and selfish except that which faith in God confers; and as there is confidence in God, there is an easy independence of all others; and one accordingly thinks neither of oneself in relation to others, nor of others in relation to oneself. There is no carefulness to make an impression, no ready sense of what is due to me. It in fact gives one [p. 140] the easy manner of wanting nothing from any one; ready for any one to use, but never expecting to be thought of or remembered because used. We must learn to lend, hoping for nothing. There is a certain honest feeling which expects acknowledgments of services rendered; but when this feeling rules, it has the tendency to make oneself too much the object; and though the feeling is right and true in itself, it brings self into prominence and imparts too much expectation from that which is not reliable in itself, even nature; and the only way to check this is by increased dependence on God. Real, full dependence on God imparts such an case to the soul, and consequently to all one’s relations and ways with others, that only as it is learned, can one discover how much was expected and exacted from others, and as it is learned there is increased satisfaction of heart because of reckoning on God; and one wonders how increasingly little one expects or exacts. The Lord will have us not only to taste of dependence on Himself, but to be proficient in it; and the growths which hinder the fruit buds must be cut away, that the latter may come forth in vigour, and the tree answer to its true character.