April 27

God prepares His instruments

“God hath chosen . . . the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Cor. 1:27).
“. . . Out of weakness were made strong” (Heb. 11:34).
Dec. 20, 1912. Somehow God tells me all my life has been a preparation for this coming ten years or more. It has been a rough discipline. Oh, the agony of it! The asthma, what has not that meant, a daily and nightly dying! The bodily weakness! The being looked down upon by the world folk! The poverty! And have I not been tempted? Tempted to stop working for Christ! Doctors! Relatives! Family! Christians! Who has not declared I tempted God by rising up, and “going at it” again? It has not been I, it has been Christ Who has carried me through. . . . Only this is a poor weak worm of a creature that God has chosen to put into the fiery furnace and walk with Him, and bring him out again. And now! Ah, yes, He seems to be pouring health and strength into me, and a burning, consuming desire to live, to live for Christ and men. Glory! Glory! It is Jesus, supreme. He is my chief love and my Chief.
—C. T. Studd.

When Nature wants to take a man
And shake a man
And wake a man;
When Nature wants to make a man
To do the Future’s will;
When she tries with all her skill
And she yearns with all her soul
To create him large and whole . . .
With what cunning she prepares him!
How she goads and never spares him,
How she whets him and she frets him,
And in poverty begets him . . .
How she often disappoints
Whom she sacredly anoints,
With what wisdom she will hide him,
Never minding what betide him
Though his genius sob with slighting
And his pride may not forget!
Bids him struggle harder yet.
Makes him lonely
So that only
God’s high messages shall reach him
So that she may surely teach him
What the Hierarchy planned.
—Angela Morgan.

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