我是你们的主,你们的夫子,尚且洗你们的脚,你们也当彼此洗脚。(约十三14)
把握每天的机会事奉,不是拣选自己的环境,而是在神安排的任何环境下,都为神所用。我们在现有环境下表现的特性,可以代表在任何别的环境下的表现。耶稣所做的,是最卑下的日常工作;这就是说我需要神在我里面全部的能力,来依他的方式做最平常普通的事。我能像他那样用一条毛巾吗?毛巾、碗碟、鞋,以及一切日常生活中卑微的事,比别的东西更能反映出我们的本相。需要全能的神成为肉身在我们里面,才能按照祂的心意完成最卑微的任务。
“我给你们作了榜样,叫你们照着我向你们所作的去作。”留意神摆在你周围的人;你会羞愧地发现,这是祂向你揭示你一直以来对祂是怎么样的人。他现在说:“要照我向你所作的,向那个人行。” 你会说:“呀!到了海外的禾场,我自然会一一去做了。” 这样的说法,就等于去到战壕才制造弹药,结果你会在制造的当儿,就送命了。
我们要与神一起走第“二里路”。有些人在头十米就放弃了,因为神要我们行看不见方向的路,我们就说:“我还是等到重大关头来到时再走。”若你在日常小事上不稳步前进,危机来到时,你什么也做不来。
祈祷◆“耶和华必作王”;噢,主啊,今天愿你统治的能力,为着你的荣耀,在你仆人身上彰显。
September 11: Missionary Munitions
If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.” John 13:14
Ministering as opportunity surrounds us does not mean selecting our surroundings, it means being very selectly God’s in any haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us. The characteristics we manifest in our immediate surroundings are indications of what we will be like in other surroundings.
The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God’s power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.
“I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you.” Watch the kind of people God brings around you, and you will be humiliated to find that this is His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now, He says, exhibit to that one exactly what I have shown to you.
“Oh,” you say, “I will do all that when I get out into the foreign field.” To talk in this way is like trying to produce the munitions of war in the trenches – you will be killed while you are doing it.
We have to go the “second mile” with God. Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say – “I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis.” If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.