Copyright ©1992 by Oswald Chambers Publications
Association, Ltd. Original edition
copyright©
1935 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success
Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to
you…” (Luke 10:20)
Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as
Christian workers; nor it is sin. The
trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success
measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which
we now live. Never seek after anything
other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go “outside the camp,
bearing his reproach” (Hebrews 13:13)
In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in
successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us
do rejoice. We have a commercialized
view—we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and
then we think everything is all right.
Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to
disciple them. Salvation and
sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His
disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to
God. One life totally devoted to God is
of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simple awakened by
His Spirit. As workers for God, we must
reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God’s testimony to
us as His workers. God brings us up to a
standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that
same standard in others.
Unless the worker lives a life that “is hidden with
Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to
others, instead of an active, living disciple.
Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to
groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in
that way. Whenever our Lord talked about
discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if”, never with the
forceful or dogmatic statement—“You must.”
Discipleship carries with it an option.
I really needed to hear this today Kay. Thanks for posting!
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