Changi Chapel

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be
my disciple" (Luke 14:26).
The Greek

word for hate means "to love less by comparison." Jesus is calling us
to have a love for him that is so all-inclusive, fervent and absolute that all
our earthly affections cannot come close.

We have become selfish and self-centered in our prayers: "Give us…meet
us…bless us…use us…protect us." All this may be scriptural, but the focus
remains on us. Even our work for the Lord has become selfish. We want him to
bless our service to him, so we can know our faith is genuine. The Lord is more
interested in what we are becoming in him than in what we are doing for him.

Someone reading this may be hurting because doors of ministry have closed. He
or she may feel "put on the shelf." Someone else may think he would be more
useful to the Lord on some needy mission field. But I say we cannot be more
useful to the Lord than when we minister love to him in the secret closet of
prayer. When we seek the Lord, when we search his Word endlessly to know him,
then we are at the peak of our usefulness. We do more to bless and satisfy God
by being shut up with him in loving communication than by doing anything else.
Whatever work he might open up for us to do, at home or abroad, will flow
effortlessly out of our communion with him. He is more interested in winning
our whole hearts than in our winning the world for him.

This is not to demean fervent soul-winning labors, but to state that all
Spirit-blessed evangelism is birthed in communion. The witness who is often
with the Lord in prayer will be given the wisdom, the Holy Ghost timing, and
the power to do the will of God.

Copyright: David Wilkerson