| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 12 |
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How, then, may we learn God’s will for us, his plan for our life, what he wants us to do? The first condition must always be entire readiness to accept his will for our life when it is made known. It is not enough to be willing to do Christian work. There are many people who are quite ready to do certain things in the service of Christ, who are not ready to do anything he might want them to do. Many of us have our little pet projects in Christian work, our pleasant pastimes of service for our Master, things we like to do. Into these we enter with enthusiasm. They are to our mind. We give ourselves to them eagerly and with ardor. We suppose that we are thoroughly consecrated to Christ’s work because we are so willing to do these things. Possibly we are, but there is a severer test. It is not whether we are ready to do things for Christ, which we like to do, but whether we are ready to do just as heartily anything he may give us to do.
The heart of consecration is not devotion to this or that kind of service for Christ, but devotion to the divine will. It may not be any form of activity; sometimes it is quiet waiting. It is not bringing a great many souls to Christ, visiting a great many sick or suffering ones, attending a great many meetings, talking a great deal. Some weary one, shut away in the darkness, in the chamber of pain, may be illustrating true consecration far more beautifully than those whose hands are fullest of Christian activities in the bustling world. Consecration is devotion to the will of Christ. It is readiness to do, not what we want to do in his service, but what he gives us to do. When we reach this state, we shall not need to wait long to find our work. When the continual prayer is, “Lord, what wilt thou have me do?” the answer will soon be given in each case.
The next condition of Consecration, resulting from this, is the holding of our life directly and always at the disposal of Christ. Not only must we be willing to do this will, whatever it is, but also we must do it. This is the practical part. The moment Christ wants us for any service we must drop everything and respond to the call. Our little plans must be made always under his eye, as fitting into and as parts of, his perfect plan for our life. This is the meaning of the prayer we are taught to make continually, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” We hold everything of our own most loosely, knowing that it is not our own, and that it may be asked for any moment. We make our arrangements and engagements, with the consciousness that the Master may have other use or other work for us, and that at his bidding we must give up our own plan for his.
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