The enormous Value of being Hidden!
The true test of spiritual greatness is permanence. ~ A.W. Tozer
The hard yards, the unseen yards are what a Christian lives.
Three Biblical 'superstars' first lived in obscurity. Jacob, Elijah, and John the Baptist are such men.
Every greatly used instrument of God has:
- wrestled with God all night (despite the pain) in their Jabbok
- drank from their own Cherith brook for years, or
- told a Herod he was a sinner.
Wind the clock a few thousand years forward to three similar 'modern' men:
- Under the unction of an evening pulpit call Hudson Taylor rushed out of the church service into a Norfolk beach night and prayed Your will not mine be done.
- In the cold evening of a Maine pine forest A. B. Simpson knelt against a log under a tear-filled heaviness of internal suffering, he cried Your will not mine be done.
- Only four days on an Amazonian beach, deep in an Ecuadorian jungle the 29 year old Jim Elliot died, speared by a native. He died living Your will not mine be done. I know this tale to be absolutely true. In only four days (one day longer than our Lord) he was a greatly used instrument of God. I was in Amsterdam forty-four years later and among another 9,999 in a very large Christian gathering. From a far-away stage we were all introduced to Jim's wife who then introduced us to this tiny Auca man, now a Christian - he had thrown the spear that made her a widow. Jim received an 'early mark' to heaven. He died as he taught:
he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
The Last Word:
Live in honor, die in honor - but never aim for honor.