October 5, 2023How is your week going? I hope that you are rejoicing in the Lord and seeing His provisions for you. In his book “The Disciplines of Life” the late Dr. V. Raymond Edman examines thirty-one disciplines, one for each day of most months. Today I would like to share some of what he wrote in a chapter entitled “The Discipline of Distinction” beginning with:
Your Place
Dr. Edman writes: “King Uzziah illustrates the discipline of distinction, and his experience should search out our soul. Of him we read, ‘for he was marvellously helped, till he was strong; but when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction.’ He had begun well. As a youth he carried large responsibilities, and performed them carefully and conscientiously. He would have understood what Jeremiah meant when he wrote later, ‘It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth’ (Lamentations 3:27) … Blessed is that young person that learns in tender years to trust God and to obey Him, to forget self and to serve others, to lose his life for Jesus’ sake, and to find that ‘them that honor me I will honor,’ saith the Lord (1 Samuel 2:30).
The discipline of distinction comes to us when we have achieved a place of prominence, a plane of privilege, a plateau of prosperity, and pleasure of plenty. In prominence do we have the humility of heart that marked us when we followed closely after the meek and merciful Man of Sorrows? Then we perceived that ‘the meek will he guide in judgment; and the meek will he teach his way’ (Psalm 25:9). In privilege do we have the concern for the rights and feelings of others that we had when we were ourselves obscure and unimportant? Then we learned ‘kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another … even as Christ forgave’ (Colossians 3:12, 13). In prosperity do we have the same tenderness, even tearfulness, of heart and trust in the provision of the God of all grace and comfort that we had when we were penniless in purse and poor in spirit? Then we knew that ‘the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry … The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit … none of them that trust in him shall be desolate’ (Psalm 34:15, 18, 22).
In our pleasure of plenty do we remember that once we were in painfulness and weariness, that it was of the Lord’s mercies that we were not consumed, that His grace was sufficient, that ‘every good gift and every perfect gift … cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness’ (James 1:17) … Now that we have plenty, do we praise God for His many blessings, do we thank Him that our cup is sweet, do we pray for the needy of earth and provide for them out of what God has entrusted to us?
The real test of Christian character comes not when we are toiling to the point of sheer exhaustion; rather it appears when we are exalted and extolled … King Uzziah was ‘marvellously helped, till he was strong.’ But when he was strong, what then? ‘His heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his God’ (2 Chronicles 26:15, 16).
May God grant to us the stern discipline that will enable us to regard distinction as a stewardship to be used in His service, bringing with it deepened dependence upon Him, more definite devotion to duty, disinclination to hear the adulation of others, distaste for the praise of men, death to self-interest, and daily delight in doing His bidding. Thus with increasing lowliness of heart, and love to God and our fellow men, we shall serve Him all of our days, in prosperity or in poverty, in pleasure or in pain, in prominence or in obscurity.”
May we remember to thank God for His amazing love and provisions!
Scripture for the weekend: “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.” Psalm 100:4 (NKJV)
By His grace,
Steve