Today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers is short and simple, but very, very important for every believer to know about themselves!
Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all. —Philippians 2:17
Are you willing to be offered for the work of the faithful — to pour out your life blood as a libation on the sacrifice of the faith of others? Or do you say — “I am not going to be offered up just yet, I do not want God to choose my work. I want to choose the scenery of my own sacrifice; I want to have the right kind of people watching and saying, ‘Well done.’ “
It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people’s feet. Suppose God wants to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased” — are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket — to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity.
I don't believe for a moment that God's perfect plan for us is to be abused, BUT, are we WILLING to sometimes be treated poorly, to do work that no one ever notices and that we get no natural rewards for? We are so programmed to associate high salaries, appearances, possessions, popularity, acceptance of other people, and any number of other things with success, when TRUE success is being WHERE God wants you to be, doing WHAT God wants you to do! The Word of God promises natural blessings to the diligent, but He does NOT promise that they will come overnight or that they will look exactly like someone else's rewards. The only real gauge for our success is to be diligently obedient to Psalm 37:4:4 Delight yourself also in the Lord: and he shall give you the desires of your heart.
When we delight in the Lord by making Him and His Word our #1 priority, HE will place desires in our hearts so that He can fulfill them! Are YOU ready to surrender your own will to His will, completely trusting that good, and ONLY good rewards come from Him? I am! Let's be about it! AMEN! Here is Hillsong with "I Surrender":
Shalom in Him!
