“Our great desire is that you will keep right on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true. Then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent. Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God’s promises because of their faith and patience.”- Hebrews 6:11-12
This is my first installment of A cloud of witnesses– quotes from finishers in the faith. I have read some compelling books from giants of faith in Christ who are at home with the Lord now and some from men and women of God who are still among us and I wanted to share some of what I read- hopefully motivating you, as it is me, to endure to the end too!
This week from The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. First, here’s a little bio on our brother Nee:
Watchman Nee became a Christian in mainland China in 1920 at the age of seventeen and began writing in the same year. Throughout the nearly thirty years of his ministry, Watchman Nee was clearly manifested as a unique gift from the Lord to His Body for His move in this age. In 1952 he was imprisoned for his faith; he remained in prison until his death in 1972. His words remain an abundant source of spiritual revelation and supply to Christians throughout the world. (Taken from WatchmanNee.org) You can read more about his life and ministry and testimonies here and here.
Now from the book (which I HIGHLY recommend):
And while he was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster cruse (flask) of ointment of spikenard very costly; and she brake the cruse, and poured it over his head…Jesus said…”Verily I say unto you, wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” (Mark 14:3,6,9)…
But there were some that had indignation among themselves, saying, “To what purpose hath this wast of ointment been made? For this ointment might have been sold for above three hundred pence and given to the poor.” And they murmured against her (Mark 14:4-5).
These words bring us to what I believe the Lord would have us consider finally together, namely, that which is signified by the little word “waste.”
What is waste? Waste means, among other things, giving more than is necessary. If a shilling will do and you give a pound, it is a waste. If two grams will do and you give a kilogram, it is a waste. If three days will suffice to finish a task well enough and you lavish five days or a week on it, it is a waste. Waste means that you give something too much for somthing too little. If someone is receiving more than he is considered to be worth, then that is a waste…
But if the Lord is worthy, then how can it be a waste? He is worthy to be served. He is worthy for me to be his prisoner. He is worthy for me to just live for Him. He is worthy!…
Whenever you meet someone who has really suffered- someone who has gone through experiences with the Lord that have brought limitation, and who, instead of trying to break free in order to be “used,” has been willing to be imprisoned by him and has thus learned to find satisfaction in the Lord and nowhere else- then immediately you become aware of something. Immediately your spiritual senses detect a sweet savor of Christ. Something has been crushed, something has been broken in that life, and so you smell the odor. The odor that filled the house that day in Bethany still fills the Church today; Mary’s fragrance never passes. It needed but one stroke to break the flask for the Lord, but her action- that unreserved giving and the fragrance of that anointing- abides.
We are speaking here of what we are; not of what we do or what we preach. Perhaps you may have been asking the Lord for a long time that he will be pleased to use you in such a way as to impart impressions of himself to others. That prayer is not exactly for the gift of preaching or teaching. It is rather that you might be able, in your touch with others, to impart God, the presence of God, the sense of God. Let me tell you, dear freinds, you cannot produce such impressions of God upon others without the breaking of everything, even your most precious possessions, at the feet of the Lord Jesus.
But if once that point is reached, you may or may not seem to be much used in an outward way, but God will begin to use you to create a hunger in others. People will scent Christ in you. The most unlikely people will detect it. They will sense that here is one who has gone with the Lord, one who has suffered, one who has not moved freely, independently, but who has known what it is to subject everything to Him. That kind of life creates impressions, and impreassions create hunger, and hunger provokes men to go on seeking until they are brought by divine revelation into fullness of life in Christ.
God does not set us here first of all to preach or to do work for him. The first thing for which he sets us here is to create in others a hunger for himself. That is, after all, what prepares the soil for the preaching.
If you set a delicious cake in front of two men who have just had a heavy meal, what will be their reaction? They will talk about it, admire its appearance, discuss the recipe, argue about the cost- do everything, in fact, but eat it! But if they are truly hungry it will not be very long before the cake is gone. And so it is with the things of the Spirit. No true work will ever begin in a life without first of all a sense of need being created. But how can this be done? We cannot inject spiritual appetite by force into others; we cannot compel people to be hungry. Hunger has to be created, and it can be created in others only by those who carry with them the impressions of God.
I always like to think of the words of that “great woman” of Shunem. Speaking of the prophet, whom she had observed but whom she did not know well, she said, “Behold now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually” (2 Kings 4:9). It was not what Elisha said or did that conveyed that impression, but what he was. By his merely passing by she could detect something; she could see. What are people sensing about us? We may leave many kinds of impressions: we may leave the impression that we are clever, that we are gifted, that we are this or that or the other. But no: the impression left by Elisha was an impression of God himself…
There must be something- a willingness to yield, a breaking and a pouring out of everything to him- which gives release to that fragrance of Christ and produces in other lives an awareness of need, drawing them out and on to know the Lord. The is what I feel to be the heart of everything. The Gospel has as its one object the producing in us sinners of a condition that will satisfy the heart of our God. In order that he may have that, we come to him with all we have, all we are- yes, even the most cherished things in our spiritual experience- and we make known to him:
Lord, I am willing to let go all of this for you: not just for your work, not for your children, not for anything else at all, but altogether and only for yourself!
Oh, to be wasted! It is a blessed thing to be wasted for the Lord. So many who have been prominent in the Christian world know nothing of this. Many of us have been used to the full- have been used, I would say, too much- but we do not know what it means to be wasted on God. We like to be always “on the go”: the Lord would sometimes prefer to have us in prison. We think in terms of apostolic journeys: God dares to put his greatest ambassadors in chains.
But thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savor of his knowledge in every place (2 Cor.2:14).
And the house was filled with the odor of the ointment (John 12:3).
The Lord grant us grace that we may learn how to please him. When, like Paul, we make this our supreme aim (2 Cor.5:9), the Gospel will have achieved its end.
– From pgs. 177, 178, 180, 186-189
Sheila Dougal 