A Saint
"Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The Lord hath called me from the womb ... and he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword" (Isaiah 49:1-2).
A saint is made by God, 'He made me.' Then do not tell God He is a bungling workman. We do that whenever we say 'I can't.' To say 'I can't' literally means we are too strong in ourselves to depend on God. 'I can't pray in public; I can't talk in the open air.' Substitute 'I won't', and it will be nearer the truth. The thing that makes us say 'I can't is that we forget that we must rely entirely on the creative purpose of God and on this characteristic of perfect finish for God.
Much of our difficulty comes because we choose our own work – 'Oh well, this is what I am fitted for.' Remember that Jesus took a fisherman and turned him into a shepherd. That is symbolic of what He does all the time. The idea that we have to consecrate our gifts to God is a dangerous one. We cannot consecrate what is not ours (1 Corinthians 4:7). We have to consecrate ourselves, and leave our gifts alone. God does not ask us to do the thing that is easy to us naturally; He only asks us to do the thing we are perfectly fitted to do by grace, and the cross will always come along that line. "
A saint is made by God, 'He made me.' Then do not tell God He is a bungling workman. We do that whenever we say 'I can't.' To say 'I can't' literally means we are too strong in ourselves to depend on God. 'I can't pray in public; I can't talk in the open air.' Substitute 'I won't', and it will be nearer the truth. The thing that makes us say 'I can't is that we forget that we must rely entirely on the creative purpose of God and on this characteristic of perfect finish for God.
Much of our difficulty comes because we choose our own work – 'Oh well, this is what I am fitted for.' Remember that Jesus took a fisherman and turned him into a shepherd. That is symbolic of what He does all the time. The idea that we have to consecrate our gifts to God is a dangerous one. We cannot consecrate what is not ours (1 Corinthians 4:7). We have to consecrate ourselves, and leave our gifts alone. God does not ask us to do the thing that is easy to us naturally; He only asks us to do the thing we are perfectly fitted to do by grace, and the cross will always come along that line. "
From DAILY THOUGHTS FOR DISCIPLES by Oswald Chambers
