Daily Encouragement For January 27:

The Christian life is a good, full, rewarding life like no other, but it is also one of great humbleness and humility. If God has called you to be truly like Jesus in all your spirit and soul He will put in you such demands of obedience that you will not even be allowed to follow other Christians.

In numerous ways, He seems to let other good people do things which He will never let you do. Others who seem to be very religious and useful may push themselves, and scheme to carry out their plans, but you cannot. If you attempt it, you will feel such failure and rebuke from God that it would bring you to tears because you are meant to serve God in truth.

God may allow others can brag about themselves, their work, their successes, their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do such a thing. If you begin to do so, He will lead you to despise yourself and all your good works because the closer you get to God the more you see that you are only successful because of Him.

God may allow others to succeed in making great sums of money, or live in luxury, but God may supply you on a day-to-day living basis only because He wants you to have something far better than gold, His unseen treasures in heaven.

God may allow others to be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how hard you have been working. Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others take the credit for what you have done. Through this, God wants to teach you the message of the Cross, to serve unconditionally, with humbleness and humility.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, and with a jealous love rebuke you for careless words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem to distressed over. He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but in the end His love for you will shine through.

The Christian life will never be as pretty as we fantasize that it will be, but it is a life of victory. Adversity, battles, and constant struggles will always be part of our lives. Ours is a life of a forward march. We are told to, “endure hardness as a good soldier” as we live for Christ. The very people doing the most work for God in saving souls, in mission work, in the care of others, are those who are working on short supplies of strength, of money, of talents, of advantages and are kept in a position of living by faith and taking from God, day by day both physical and spiritual supplies! This is the way God succeeds and gains conquests over His own people, and over those who are crucified with Christ.

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” -Galatians 2:20.