"OTHERS MAY...YOU CANNOT"

by W. B. Howard
(Access Hannah Whitalls books
also for extra comfort & teaching)

If God has called you to be really like Jesus 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 and ministers who seem very religious and useful 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 may brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, on their writings, 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 will be allowed to succeed in making money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries. But it likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something better than gold, and this 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 hid away in obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He 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 the work you have done, and this will 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 seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign God, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.

He will take you at your word; and 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 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 He does not deal 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, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven." (End of quote).

FAITH is needed at every step of this life on this fallen planet. Our Saviour knows what He is doing with you, beloved of the Lord. Consider the faith passage, Hebrews 11, what a list of trials and seeming disasters it gives to us. Awhile ago, a missionary and his two sons from Australia were burned alive in their car by Hindu extremists in India. But, Hebrews 11 shows that the history of the people of God on this planet runs red with their blood! This horrifying incident in India is no isolated occurrence in a world teeming with rebels against the One true God, rebels who are controlled by Satan. Faith in the One who loves us so can master insurmountable difficulties. The following quote from F.B. Meyer, written on the Hebrews 11, is a joy to read. Praise God, He will take us through in triumph until we meet Jesus face-to-face in glory:

"There are many difficulties before us all.

Stormy seas forbid our passage;

frowning fortifications bar our progress;

mighty kingdoms defy our power;
lions roar against us;

fire lights its flaming barricade in our path;

the sword, the armies of the alien, mockings,

scourgings, bonds, and imprisonment-all these
menace our peace,

darken our horizon, and try on us their power;

but faith has conquered all these before,

and it shall do as much again.

We will laugh at impossibility;

we will tread the shores of the seas,

certain they must make us a way;

we will enter the dens of wild beasts
and the furnaces of flame,

sure that they are impotent to injure us;

we shall escape the edge of the sword,

out of weakness become strong,

turn to flight armies of aliens,

and set at nought all the power of the enemy:

and all because we believe God.

Reckon one God's faithfulness.

Look not at the winds and the waves,

but at His character and will.

Get alone with Him,

steeping your heart and mind in

His precious and exceeding great promises.
Be obedient to the utmost limit of your light.

Walk in the Spirit, one of whose fruit is faith.

So shall you be deemed worthy to join this band,

whose names and exploits run over from this page

into the Chronicles of eternity,
and to share their glorious heritage."

(p.139, The WayInto theHoliest)

Read these Scriptures to ponder prayerfully the above comments:
Song of Solomon 4:12-16; Psalm 92:12-15; Psalm 36:7-11;
Jeremiah 9:23-24; Revelation 18:10-20.
OUR GOD IS FOR US, WHO CAN BE AGAINST US?