by G. D. Watson
If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 16:24-25
If God has called you to be truly like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility. He will put on you such demands of obedience that you will not be allowed to follow other Christians. In many ways, He seems to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.
Others who seem to be very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and scheme to carry out their plans, but you cannot. 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, their work, their successes, their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. If you begin to do so, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
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 only on a day-to-day basis, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, a helpless dependence on Him and His unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honored and put forward while keeping you hidden in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.
God may let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done; this to teach you the message of the Cross, humility, and something of the value of being cloaked with His nature.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, and with a jealous love rebuke you for careless 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 a right to do as He pleases with His own, and that He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.
God will take you at your word. 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. Settle it forever; you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways which others are not dealt with. However, know this great secret of the Kingdom: When you are so completely possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven, the high calling of God.
Sniff, Thank you Mike. How do you even begin to thank Him for that. I guess being obedient would be a good start. Thank You precious Lord Jesus .
Sniff, you are welcome Deb. Yeah, I wept as well. You are correct in your analysis my sister.
OOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhhhh that was good………….. What a plan He had before the creation of the world. And He did it for us.
Amen Paul and Luann!
Hello Mike, if you want you may leave this comment unpublished. I just would like to invite you to discern if it is right before God that we use any depiction/image/drama/film to represent God. You will find with ease many well written critics on this.
A subject I am coming to consider is about the use of drama to represent a Bible “story”, not necesarily presenting God (ex. David and Goliath). If faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of God, then faith will not come by seeing. But as I said, I am thinking about this at the moment.
And if it is not right, then besides refraining from sinning in it; we must not harm any brother who is weaker in the faith by using such depictions.
Orlando
I have just read your rules for comments. If anything in my comment is offensive (which I do not think, probably I went right to the point but I do not have intention to harm by it), please ignore that which is offensive and consider just the core of the comment, which is the use of images or depictions of God.
By the way, I have been visiting the church you suggested to me. Thank you for it (Metropolitan Tabernacle, London). Have a good evening.
Orlando,
I am glad you have found that church. I don’t think the movie images represent anything that would be idolatrous. Jesus is God and is a man. The entire focus of that movie strip was to show the agony through the torture and crucifixion of our Lord as a man. It in no way tried to create an idolatrous statement that would cause people to worship those images. If so, then I would not have posted it.
Salvation will not come to anyone from seeing a movie unless that movie was completely factual about he Gospel. However, I did not post this for that reason.
I would like for you to explain to me how this movie could harm any true brother in Christ who viewed it.
In Christ
Mike Ratliff