The High Calling

(I did not write this. It was given to me by a friend. I doubt he wrote it either)--EF

If God called you to be really like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crusification and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience, that He will not allow you to follow other believers, and in many ways, He will seem to let other good people do things which he will not let you do.

Others who seem very spiritual 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 you 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 such a thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into such deep mortification that you will 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 will supply you daily because He wants you to have something far better than gold—and that is the helpless dependence on Him—so 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 hid away in obscurity, because He wants you 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 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 will let others get the credit for what you have done, and this will make your work ten times greater 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 other people never seem distressed over.

So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His word; and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let others 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 peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.