If God has called you to be truly like Jesus, He will lead you into a life of crucifixion and humility, placing upon you such demands of obedience that you will not be able to follow others or measure yourself by other Christians. In many ways, He will allow others to do things that He will not permit you to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other Christians and ministers, who may appear very religious and useful, might promote themselves, pull strings, and devise schemes to carry out their plans. However, you cannot do these things. If you attempt to, you will encounter failures and rebukes from the Lord, making you deeply penitent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others may boast of themselves, their work, their successes, or their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do such things. If you begin to boast, He will lead you into deep mortification, causing you to despise yourself and all your good works. Others may succeed in making money or receive a legacy, but it is likely that God will keep you poor because He wants you to have something far better than gold\u2014namely, a helpless dependence upon Him. This way, He can supply your needs day by day from an unseen treasury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lord may allow others to be honored and put in the spotlight while keeping you hidden in obscurity. He does this 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 while keeping you small. He may let others do work for Him and receive credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are accomplishing. To make your work even more precious, He may allow others to receive credit for the work you have done, thus making your reward ten times greater when Jesus returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Holy Spirit will place a strict watch over you with a jealous love and will rebuke you for minor words and feelings or for wasting time\u2014things that other Christians might never feel distressed about. So, make up your mind that God is an infinite sovereign who has the right to do as He pleases with His own. He may not explain a thousand things that puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you absolutely surrender yourself to be His love slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and bestow upon you many blessings that come only to those in the inner circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, chaining your hands, or closing your eyes in ways that He does not seem to use with others. When you are so possessed by the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over the peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
VICTORY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When you are forgotten, neglected, or purposely set aside and you smile inwardly, glorifying in the insult or the oversight, thereby counting yourself worthy to suffer with Christ\u2014that is victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When your good is spoken of as evil, when your wishes are crossed, your taste offended, your advice disregarded, and your opinions ridiculed, and you accept it all in patient, loving silence\u2014that is victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you are content with any food, any clothing, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God\u2014this is victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLord Jesus, make Thyself to me A living, bright Reality; More present to faith\u2019s vision keen Than any earthly object seen; More dear, more intimately nigh Than e\u2019en the dearest earthly tie\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scripture note: Philippians 2:3-8<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If God has called you to be truly like Jesus, He will lead you into a life of crucifixion and humility, placing upon you such demands of obedience that you will not be able to follow others or measure yourself by other Christians. In many ways, He will allow others to do things that He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-straight-from-the-heart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2462,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions\/2462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegroommagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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