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The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success
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Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you . . . —Luke 10:20 |
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| Worldliness
is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin.
The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is,
success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age
in which we now live. Never seek after anything other than the approval of
God, and always be willing to go "outside the camp, bearing His reproach" (Hebrews
13:13 ). In Luke
10:20 , Jesus told the disciples not to
rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in
which most of us do rejoice. We have a commercialized view— we count how
many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think
everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid
the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them.
Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our
work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally
yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than
one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers
for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be
God’s testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life
through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard
in others. Unless the worker lives a life that "is hidden with Christ in God" ( Colossians 3:3 ), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an "if," never with the forceful or dogmatic statement— "You must." Discipleship carries with it an option. |