OVERCOMING DIFFIDENCE IN SERVICE

N. T. Meek

Exodus 33: 12–19; Judges 6; 11–17; Romans 12: 1–3

I desire to say a word, dear brethren, about overcoming diffidence or reluctance in taking up our responsibilities and our privileges in the things of God. We were saying earlier today that there is much to be done. The work needs to be done, and God would enlist your and my support in it. He needs a pair of hands, your pair of hands, in His work. We could have no greater privilege than to be allowed to handle, and maybe even further, His work. The Lord would use you like a tool, as a carpenter uses a chisel. He would work with you. God is not working exactly miraculously now as He did in creation, but He is forming Christ in men. He is doing it through the patient, steady service of those He employs in His work.

Think of what a workman Paul was and how skilled he became in handling God’s property.

Most of us who have done a little carpentry have realized that some skill needs to be acquired. The task needs a little bit of thought; it needs an element of appraisal, weighing up the situation. And thus would Paul serve, as we see in 1 Corinthians 2: 2. I speak especially to young brothers in saying this. As we begin to take up our responsibilities we may well feel our incapacity. We see other brethren serving; maybe they seem to make it look easy. It is not easy really, but you just find the Lord helps you in His grace. He helps you to speak to His people. It may be you feel diffident. It may be you have been asked to preach and you are diffident. You feel you will not make much of a go of it.

Well, Moses felt that way. I suppose there was no greater servant ever than Moses, yet this chapter (Exodus 33) brings out his diffidence, his reluctance. He had a conversation with God. It is important, beloved, that we learn to have communion, learn to speak to God. Speak to Him about every matter that comes your way. As we have often said, there is not a single matter that is inappropriate to speak to God about. He enters sympathetically into your difficulties, but He would help you overcome your diffidence. He would help you overcome your reluctance to pass on the impression of Christ that you have. I would say this to everyone here, and I am sure it is the truth, that each one has a unique impression of Christ, which is never duplicated. There is never a second equivalent impression; it is unique. Every believer is a unique formation and he has his own peculiar and unique impression of Christ.

I am not saying that the measure of this is always the same, but what I am saying is that you have your own distinction. You have your own distinct impression of Christ, and God would have that impression released for the gain of His people and for men. Your particular appreciation of Jesus may be as a Saviour and it is personal to yourself, as mine is personal to myself. One day you are going to have a name that is personal to yourself, and I am going to have a name that is personal to myself. But now is the time when that personal impression is to come into evidence, into expression. Something of it is to radiate outwards and to affect others. Moses had his own unique impression and he says to Jehovah here, “Let me … see thy glory”. Have you ever asked that? Have you ever asked God to give you an impression of His glory? Surely you hold some impression of the glory of God. How much will fall before it! The glory of this world, the glory that men seek, the idols in sport and the like, will all fall down if you get some impression of the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus.

If you have an impression of the glory of Christ, if you appreciate His saviour-ship, why should you not preach? Why should you not tell your fellows about it, tell them what He means to you? I know our preachings are not exactly testimony meetings and yet the testimony that a believer has himself is bound to come out sooner or later. His impression of Christ is bound to come out as he speaks. God is very tender with Moses here. There was a great work on hand. Moses was diffident, but God was very tender. Yet we must not trifle with the work. Moses says, “Let me ... see thy glory”. God says, “My presence shall go”, as much as to say, ‘I will stand with you when you stand up at the desk’. You do not feel equal to it? Fine, that is the best thing you could say! You do not feel equal to it; who of us does?

Paul says himself, “Who is sufficient for these things?” You will find God is equal to it. Overcome your diffidence and God will stand with you. You overcome with His tenderness, His consideration, His understanding.

Think twice, dear brother, before refusing if you are asked to preach. Jonah refused, did he not? He virtually said, No, I will not go to Nineveh. He did not want to go there. Perhaps he thought it was not a very easy place to preach in. He finished up inside a fish, and that would be worse than the streets of Nineveh! God was very tender with him too. But Jonah’s history brings out a point that is solemn. That is that we must not trifle with God’s call. We must not treat it lightly. Largely, I think, that call comes through His people. Even Paul had to learn that. He saw a Macedonian man beckoning. And why did not God tell him directly? Why was the matter set on by a man? Well, Paul was learning that God might operate in that way. He saw a Macedonian man saying, “Pass over into Macedonia and help us”. If Paul had not responded, what would have happened to Europe? Would you and I have ever been saved? Would Europe and its outgoings have been saved? I do not trench on the sovereignty of God and how He can meet every exigency, but think of what a critical thing it was that Paul should heed the beckoning of a man he saw in a vision.

God would help you to overcome your diffidence. “I will be with thy mouth”. He says (Exodus 4: 12). Our God is fair. He will not call you to anything but what He will support you in it. That is a divine principle, because He is a righteous Master. He does not ask you to make bricks without straw. He will give you plenty of straw; He will give you plenty of wherewithal; you will get it at the time. God says again, “I ... will teach thee what thou shalt say”, Exodus 4: 12. As you begin to speak, you will find the brethren are sympathetic too, the listeners are sympathetic. And you will find that thoughts come into your heart and mind which you did not expect. What is it but that the Spirit of God is acting among God’s people?

He is able to do that; He is a divine Person. And so Moses started to move. He got, so to speak, moving in service, and what a servant he was! What a loss if Moses had declined it.

You ask for a ray, you ask for some sense of God’s glory, some view of it. It may be the holy city, it may be the saints in the land, it may be Jesus personally, it may be the Father’s house, it may be all the families there. You ask for some view of the glory. That will set you going. You need it. Everyone needs it. Every one of us needs some impression of divine glory.

And now I speak about Gideon. He is in a very different day from Moses, a day more like our own. He says, so to say, we have heard about those days of Mr. Darby, Mr. Raven and Mr. Taylor, the days “our fathers told us of”. Oh, would it not be fine if they were back! It is not like that now, he says, it is a difficult day now. “Where are all his miracles that our fathers told us of?” Those three-day meetings at Rochester, and the like, where are they? God is very tender with Gideon. He is working out His ways. I suppose, beloved, if I might just say this, that something is working out in these days that could hardly have been worked out in earlier days when there was such outstanding gift. I sometimes think that every decade and every piece of assembly experience is working something into that great fabric of glory that is going to be displayed in the coming day. So we are in this day, beloved, and however much we may long for the days of Mr. Darby or Mr. Taylor we are in this day. We are in the day to which our own name is attached. It speaks about the days of Noah, and the days of Lot. Well, we are now in the days of your name and mine. These are the days we are in, and God is working something out in them.

So here is this man Gideon and he is reluctant. He is diffident. And I can understand it. And God understands it better than I do. The God who made us understands it. You will find that God is sympathetic as you take up any service for Him. You will find He is sympathetic and He will sustain you and He will support you and He will be behind you. Then remember that the time when you did not think you got on too well was possibly the time when you got on best of all. The Lord does the most extraordinary things. He comes in even in relation to our weakness. Christianity is such a system that God can bless even a mistake. That is not to say that we should be making mistakes. But

even if we do. God knows how to bless it. God says to Gideon, You go. Oh, he says, “My thousand is the poorest in Manasseh”, “Wherewith shall I save Israel?” What have I got? That is how you feel. That is how anyone feels. You get enough for one meeting and perhaps an outline for a three-day meeting. Maybe you jot down some salient features you want to remember in a notebook, and when you look at it you say, What is it? It seems so small. But you just bring it out; bring out what you have got.

It is like the miracle of the loaves when the Lord was here. You find how it multiplies, how it grows. You find yourself getting on tracks and avenues you never envisaged. It is best when it is like that, too. It is best when you are not too cut-and-dried, when you are dependent and when you get into a channel of divine flow that you never envisaged you might get into. That is what living ministry is. Living ministry is not something that you read from prepared notes like someone at a lecture. Living ministry is what comes currently, a constant flow from Christ into the souls of His own. Oh that it might come unimpaired! That is every true servant’s wish, that it might come unimpaired, that the glory of it, the glory of divine speaking, might shine through.

God says to Gideon, “Have not I sent thee?” That is enough. “Have not I sent thee?” “Go in this thy might”. Well, Gideon would say, What might have I got? His might was seen at least in this one thing, that typically he appreciated Christ—he threshed wheat in the wine press, in cramped conditions. In difficult conditions he had a valuation of Christ and of the saints.

Have you not got that? Dear young believer, have you not got such a valuation? I am sure you have, and if you begin to speak about it you will find

it begins to expand. I would that you would overcome your diffidence. There is a generation now growing up that has had peculiar exercises, dear brethren, exercises that we did not have so deeply in earlier generations. There is a generation growing up that have had, and still have, peculiar exercises. And this experience they have should come into expression. It is perhaps time for it to come into expression. It is a legacy for the whole church. This is a word for the moment for young men of thirty years and under, maybe forty and under, that the special formation of recent years might not be lost through diffidence. I can understand your diffidence, and there is not anyone here who is not sympathetic with you, but the Lord would help you to overcome it, because you have had peculiar tests and that has formed something in you. He wants that to come into circulation, and to come into expression for the enrichment of His own work and for the cheer, I may say the peculiar cheer, of an older generation.

In Romans 12 we are exhorted to think so as to be wise. It is a well-known scripture as to how we present our bodies a living sacrifice. Are you prepared to commit yourself? How strong is your love for Christ? It is only the attractiveness of this blessed Person that will lead you to present your body a living sacrifice. My body and your body are the bodies in which we express our own wills. If you are going to put your body on the altar it means you are not going to be able any longer to express your own will. In this epistle, especially in the early chapters, you get the teaching of the gospel. That is really what leads you to present your body. It is the way that God has operated, the way that God has not only forgiven you but has justified you. He has given you the Spirit too. In some way God has glorified you by the gift of the Spirit. It is in the appreciation

of all that, what God has done, that you are prepared to lay down your body upon that altar as a sacrifice.

So the word says we are to “think so as to be wise”. You are not to think high thoughts above what you should think. You are not to get elated. That is always a problem with us. It is always a danger. It is a fault of the devil; he got elated. He knows how to inject that poison into us. But, equally, you are to think so as to be wise. Now have you any impression of Christ? Have you any impression of a single scripture that you treasure in your soul? Then think so as to be wise. You have something. You say it is not much. No, but you have something, and it is to be used. You think so as to be wise, and God will confirm you in it.

Sooner or later God will confirm you in any little service. If you are basically right, God will confirm you in His service. In another sense it is sovereign, I know, but still God is looking for persons He can use in His service. I have no doubt about it. And you are diffident. Well, think so as to be wise. Just look soberly at the situation, appraise the situation.

This book of Romans is a great book of appraisal. Chapter 7 is an appraisal of what you find within. Then God is for you, you see. That enters into the appraisal. You find all sorts of things within, but then you find that God is for you. That is a substantial matter to weigh. If you put that great fact in the balance, down go the scales. God is for me. You measure the situation and there are more reasons why you should serve the saints than there are that you should not. Is it not so? Well, I would like to encourage us, all of us. In measure we all serve.

We serve in our spirits, we serve in the

testimony, we speak a word to our neighbours; it is open to brothers and sisters alike. We should make a sober appraisal of what we can do and commit ourselves to it, and the Lord will bless us. I hope too that some young ones, some young brothers maybe, will soberly and seriously begin to take up what is spoken of as the work of the ministry, for His name’s sake.

Address at Plainfield
29 March 1986