Others May, You Cannot

Others May, You Cannot

If God has called you to be really like Christ 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 Christians who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves forward, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others can brag about themselves, and their work, on their success, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some or other humiliation (mortification) that will make you despise yourself and all your “good works.”

He allows others to succeed in making money, or have a legacy left to them and have plenty, but God will keep you poor because He wants you to have something far better than gold and that is a helpless dependence on Him; that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day—out of an unseen treasury.

The Lord will let others be honoured and put forward, and keep you hidden away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His glory, which can only be produced in the shade.

He will let others be great, but He will keep you small. He will let others do a great work for Him and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward many times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.

So, make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has the right to do what He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you the reasoning in His dealings with you. He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things that you cannot do or say.

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 that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this particular personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found heaven.