Ps Peter Tan: You Do Not Have To Protect Your Position

Some people pray so hard to get something from God. Then when God blessed them, they protect their blessings in a very natural way and they loose it. Or maybe God blessed you with grace and favor with people. And slowly you are promoted higher and higher until you are promoted very high. Whether it is a secular job or a political position or a church position. Then you forgot one thing: it was God who gave you the position.

You don't have to protect your position. You never got it by yourself. What you get by yourself, you have to protect yourself. But what you get from God, God protects you. But what happens is sometimes people reached those position and they try to do things to protect themselves. They are trying to keep in natural ways what God gave them by spiritual means. And they become a mere natural human being.

If God gave it, if anybody wants to take and God sees it fit, let it be so. But if God wants you to have it nobody else can take it. Whoever tries is in danger of facing God's dealings. You don't even have to protect that position.

I find many Christian leaders trying to protect their position. Instead of remaining with an open heart for God and just doing what God wants you to do, sometimes to protect their position they loose their zeal for God. They loose the ability to count it all lost and pressed on. They lost their bravery to do the greater things for God. It's important that we don't loose these things. We need to follow hard after God.

W Arnot: Prayer and Preaching

W. Arnot:  Prayer and Preaching
Prayer and Preaching

I watched once the operations of a brick-maker in a field of clay. There was great agility in his movements. He wrought by piece, and the more he turned out the higher was his pay. His body moved like a machine. His task for a time was simply to raise a quantity of clay from a lower to a higher level by means of a spade, lie threw up one spadeful, and then he dipped his tool in a pail of water that stood by. After every spadeful of clay there was a dip in the water. The operation of dipping occupied as much time as raising. My first thought was, if he should dispense with these apparently useless baptisms, he might perform almost double the amount of work. My second thought was wiser: on reflection, I saw that if he should continue to work without these alternate washings, the clay would have stuck to the spade, and progress would have been altogether arrested. I said to myself, Go thou and do likewise. Prayer is the baptism which makes progress quick.

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