Being ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you.… I Peter 3:15.
Be of a sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and forever. Amen. I Peter 5:8–11.
Everyone ought to know what it means to come into this walk and to go through a wilderness experience.
After we’ve suffered a little, the Lord will establish, strengthen and settle us. How precious it will be to go on with the Lord. It’s painful, however, to go from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.
Sometimes a psychiatrist is called a “shrink”—he is supposed to shrink all your problems. This happens to the whole of the man in this walk. You come here and the Lord helps you to shrink. He must increase but I must decrease were the words of John the Baptist (John 3:30).
For us to come into a ministry or a walk with the Lord doesn’t mean that we begin to expand in many areas, it means that we begin to shrink. Nonessential interests are taken away when the ministry is expanding. Time for other things diminishes, as we go on in what God wants us to do, because He must increase and we must decrease. We may wonder, “Why am I existing? Why am I going through this?” At times we may not care whether we live or not, then the Lord shows us it isn’t a natural joy of living that we get in this walk, it’s a whole meaning to life.
Mothers, anticipating growth, buy boys’ pants a little longer than necessary and shoes for their children about an extra three-quarters of an inch long. When you begin to move into a ministry, it works just the opposite. It’s like a bride who is presented with a beautiful dress. She tries it on and finds it a little small. It is such a lovely dress but there is no way to alter it. Every day as the wedding approaches she tries that dress on and can’t quite get into it so she desperately fasts and takes anything that will help her reduce. She struggles down, ounce by ounce, until she fits into her new dress.
When God has a ministry for one of the brothers we pray for him and set him aside for it. Observe him in the following weeks. Is he expanding to walk in that ministry? No, you will see God deal with him. Watch that brother shrink. After a few weeks he’s just about small enough to fit into his new office. He has been reduced to less of the self-life, and more of the Lord. As the Lord is increasing and he is decreasing, he fits into his new ministry. Later the Lord gives him another prophecy, and reveals there is going to be a new step in his ministry. It’s the same thing again, he doesn’t fit into it. It’s too small. It isn’t really too small—he’s too big. Again there’s too much of him, so he prays and seeks the Lord. He begins cutting out the spiritual calories, and getting right down to the thing that really counts in his life. Soon he’s ready to fit into the next step.
Around the beautiful great white throne in heaven, two kinds of songs will be sung. One is “Lord God Almighty, Thou art everything. The heavens of heavens cannot contain Thee, Thou art great”; the second, “I am nothing but a nothing”! We will see that He has become everything and we have become nothing. “Nothing in our own sight” is the way that we grow.
This was the way it happened in the Bible. In the earlier epistles of Paul, he said, in defending his apostleship, For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles. II Corinthians 11:5. Then in one of the last epistles he wrote he was the chiefest of sinners (I Timothy 1:15). At the time he said, “I’m the chiefest of sinners,” he was upsetting the world for God, his ministry was so great.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant.… II Corinthians 3:5, 6. How great that ministry was, but how little he had become in his own sight.
Self-esteem is the fat on your spirit. The self-life that you nurture along and build up, that ego thing, is unhealthy. God help you to bring it down. The soul life has to shrink until the Lord is everything.
Remember the direction in which we are going. This walk does not lead to the exaltation of any flesh; it leads to the crucifixion of the flesh. Crucify the old nature: put it to death, stomp on it, mortify it, bring it down in every way, so that He will be everything.