Author Unknown
If God has called you to be really like Jesus He will draw you into a life of crucifixion (semin-sequestration and -seclusion; -Ed.) and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow (behave or conduct your life like; -Ed.) other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other people do things which He will not let you do.
Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful (and “successful” and “prosperous”; -Ed.), may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans (and personal aspirations and ambitions; -Ed.), 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 may boast of themselves, of their work, of their successes, of their writings (of their huge book sales; -Ed.), but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor (obscure, and of little notoriety; -Ed.), because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day-by-day out of an unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honored and put forward (and be well-known; Ed.), and keep 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.
He may let others be “great,” but keep you “small.”
He may let others do a work for Him and get the 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 may let others get credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your reward TEN TIMES GREATER — WHEN JESUS COMES.
The Holy Spirit will put a 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 feel distressed over.
So make up your mind that God is an Infinitely Sovereign Being, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own.
He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you absolutely sell yourself to be His love slave, He will wrap you up in Jealous Love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in His Inner Circle.
Settle it forever, then, 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, (or shackling your feet; -Ed.) in ways that He does not seem to use with others.
Now, when you are so 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, then you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.
When you are forgotten, neglected, (ignored, ostracized, marginalized; -Ed.) or purposefully set at naught, and you smile inwardly, glorying in the insult or the oversight, because thereby you are counted worthy to suffer with Christ, THAT IS VICTORY!
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, when your taste is offended, when your advice is disregarded (or disdained; -Ed.), when your opinions are ridiculed (and reviled; -Ed.), and you take it all in patient, loving silence, THAT IS VICTORY!
When you are content with any food, raiment, climate, society, solitude,or any interruption by the will of God, THAT IS VICTORY!
(Many years ago this Word was personally received from Heaven: “Know that your obscurity is your protection and safeguarding until your ordained time of your full effectiveness has fully come in the last of the last days.” Surely, these are the last days, and God must have, in these “perilous times,” seasoned, tested, tried, and tempered vessels of honor to spearhead the spiritual warfare that these times require and lead God’s People — the One-third Remnant [Zech. 13:9] — who are the culled/called out who are separated from the other two-thirds as the sheep are separated from the goats in the end-time judgment of God. God must have purified Sons of Levi [Mal. 3:1-3], who have not yielded to the world’s ways and the end-times culture of apostasy and debauchery, to lead His People in this last hour. The leaders who will suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere emerge from the wilderness, a la John The Baptist, until then have been safeguarded by God in the hidden place of obscurity, lest they be taken down and out by “the wiles of the devil” [Eph. 6:11; KJV]. -Ed.)
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