Others can brag on themselves, and their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
The Lord will let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His glory, which can be produced only in the shade.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely God will keep you poor because he wants you to have something far better than gold and that is a helpless dependence on Him; that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day – out of an unseen treasury.
God will let others be great, but He will keep you small. He will let others do a great work for Him and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when He comes.
G.D. Watson
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You Were Called by the Lord.
2 Timothy 4:1-5
I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; 2 preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
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Don’t Be Corrupted by the Crowd.
2 Timothy 4:3-4
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables.
2 Timothy 4:5 AMP
5 BUT AS FOR YOU, be clear-headed in every situation [stay calm and cool and steady], endure every hardship [without flinching], do the work of an evangelist, fulfill [the duties of] your ministry.
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You Leave Behind a Legacy
2 Timothy 4:6-7
6 For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
7 I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:
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Your Legacy Determines Your Reward
2 Timothy 4:8
8 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
Revelation 22:12
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
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Your Discipline Determines Your Reward
1 Corinthians 9:24
24 Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.
1 Corinthians 9:25-26
25 And every man that strives for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 26 I therefore run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
1 Corinthians 9:27
27 but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
“The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you with jealous love. He will rebuke you for the little words and feelings or for wasting your time.
So, make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has a right to do as He pleases with His own. He does not owe you an explanation of these mysteries.
But if you give yourself to be His child, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and give you the precious blessings for those who belong, heart and soul, to Him.
Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit. It is His option to tie your tongue, or chain your hand, or close your eyes in ways that He does not seem to use with others.
And when you are so possessed by the living God that your heart delights over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.”
G.D. Watson