DISCIPLINE OF THE SERVANT NO. 1

^[p. 188] DISCIPLINE OF THE SERVANT NO. 1

The education of the servant is as John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3: 30). It was right for Paul to deprecate the thorn in the flesh, and yet he was a better and a greater servant when a reduced man than he was before. It is no easy lesson to learn “when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12: 10). It is very interesting to see that our weakest moment as a man, is our strongest divinely.... As the outer man perisheth the inner is renewed day by day. The deepest struggle is when, in the life of Jesus and in His feelings as to the things I am passing through, I part company with my own naturally approved feelings or abilities, because they are not His but merely my own. Martha would not part with her own. Mary exchanged her own for His, and was abundantly consoled.

Every exercise is only a preparation for a greater exercise. If you get over the present one with the Lord you are prepared for the next. It is a race here, or rather a steeplechase. You are no sooner over one obstruction than another is before you, but if you do not clear the one before you, you are, as they say, ‘pounded’; there is no progress. The Lord is as much for us in the least as in the greatest. If I know the good of dependence in the present I need not think of the future. His support in the present step prepares me for the next.... The more you are exercised the better you will be.