THE FIRST MARK OF A MINISTER OF GOD

THE FIRST MARK OF A MINISTER OF GOD

The first mark of a minister of God is “much patience” — a continual dropping, and this “weareth the stone”. I ^[p. 34] feel while I condemn servants for looking for success to buoy them up in their service, still that I am often discouraged because I do not see results; but that proves that I am working for hire in one sense, and not simply for my Master, doing His will. There is something very fine in Christ’s path as a Servant in this respect. He could thank God when He saw no success, and that where He had toiled the most. This is the “yoke” He tells us to take on us; and we shall find “rest” (a home) for our souls.

There may be two classes of wilfulness in a servant; the first is dictating for himself, and this plunges one at last into an inextricable deep; the second is dictating to God what He is to do; and to cure one of this there must be a withering here, so that God only may be the resource of the heart. Christ, of course, never touched on the first, the second, one might have supposed Him entitled to, but on the contrary He had no will but God’s; and He thanks that it is “even so”. This entire and cheerful acceptance of God’s will is what imparts divine rest, and one thinks not of one’s disappointment, but of His will, and when it is so there is no flagging of the energy, or no depression. I am sure there is much to discourage you in ————, but the greater the force of the adversary the more we are sure to find, if we wait on the Lord, that He will raise up a standard against it. I am very glad you are there. The more I go on, the more do I see the profundity of Christianity, and the tendency through the power against us to divert us from its simplicity, as the serpent beguiled Eve; and I feel it a great mercy to be sent anything, however painful, by which we are nipped in the bud in any incipient departure from the truth. The buds of the crab tree must be kept down; happy for us when we accept it cheerfully, and only go on the more vigorously.