The High Calling

If God has called you to be really like Jesus in all your Spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility and put on you such demands of obedience, that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do. Other Cristians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make your sorely penitent. Others can brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such things, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good work. Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them or in having luxuries, but God may supply you daily because He wants you to have something far better than gold and that is dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of providing your needs day by day out of the unseen treasury. The Lord may let others be honored, and put forward, and keep you away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. God will let others be great, but keep you small.He will let others do a work for Him, and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing; then to make your work more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten timesgreater when Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, which others Cristians never seem distressed over. So, make up your mindthat God is an infinite sovereign, and has right to do as He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. God will take you at your word; and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things that you cannot say or do. Settle it forever,that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes, in ways that others are not dealt with. Now, when you are so possessed with the living God, when you are in your heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealos guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, ..... you will have found the vestibule of heaven ....