(no subject)
This man, Watchman Nee, is rocking my world.
This book, Spiritual Authority, is completely wrecking me.
"Persons with many opinions, ideas, and subjective thoughts are to be feared. They like to be counselors to all. They seize upon every opportunity to press their ideas on others. God can never use a person so full of opinions, ideas, and thoughts as the one to represent His authority.
This is not to imply that before he can be used by God he must be reduced to having no opinion, no thought, and no judgment. Not at all. It merely means that the man must be truly broken; his cleverness and his opinions and his thoughts must all be broken. Those who are naturally talkative, opinionated, and self-conceited need a radical dealing, a basic bending. This is something which cannot be either a doctrine or an imitation. It must be wounds of the flesh. Only after one is scourged by God does he begin to live in fear and trembling before Him. He dare not open his mouth inadvertently. Were his experience nothing more than doctrine or imitation, then as time goes on the fig leaves will soon dry up (Genesis 3.7) and his original state will reappear. It is futile for us to control ourselve by our own will. In our much talking we will soon forget ourselves and expose the real self. How we need to be slain by God's light. Like Balaam in Numbers 22.25, we need to be pushed against the wall and to have our foot crushed. We will then feel pained as we move and will dare not speak casually. It is not necessary to advise one, whose foot is crushed, to walk slowly. Only by such painful experiences as this shall we be delivered from ourselves."
Wow. And thus was my fall. A season of scourging. Of crushing my feet underneath me. Oh, that the God of this universe would find me malleable, like clay.
Thoughts?