HOW TO BE USEFUL TO THE LORD
CHAPTER TWO
WEEK 2 - THURSDAY
Bible Reading: Mt 19:16-22; 25:8-9; Lk 14:26-36; Jn 20:15-17; 21:15, 18
THE RESULT OF PAYING THE PRICE
What is the result of paying the price? The result is that, by giving yourself and everything you have to God, God and all that He has are mingled with you. Paying the price is not just so that you may receive a reward and be raptured in the future. On the contrary, it is so that you and all that you have may be taken, and that God and all that He has may be added and mingled with you.
Those who are raptured first are those who are full of God. Those who enter the kingdom to receive a reward are those who are full of Christ. Those who participate in the extraordinary resurrection are those who live in the power of Christ’s resurrection today. Strictly speaking, it is not those who do not pay a price who will enter the kingdom. On the contrary, only those who have paid a price and are, therefore, full of Christ will be able to enter the kingdom.
It is not the price itself that qualifies you to enter the kingdom, nor is it the price itself that gives you the qualification to be a king. On the contrary, it is the Christ with whom you are filled who leads you into the kingdom and qualifies you to be a king.
If you want to be full of Christ, you need to pay a price. The element of God cannot enter into you unless your own element is removed. If you lack God, you cannot mature early. If you lack Christ, you will lose your qualification to be a king. Therefore, the result of paying the price is not that you will enter the kingdom to receive a reward, but that you will receive more of God and Christ. However, those who are full of God and filled with Christ will mature and be raptured first, and only they will enter the kingdom and reign on the throne.
If children spend all day thinking only about receiving their parents’ wealth but do not love their parents, they are as senseless as thieves. If we do not pay the price, love God, or seek the Lord, but spend all day only thinking about being raptured and receiving a reward, then we are simply daydreaming.
On the other hand, if children do not worry about their parents’ wealth but only love and seek to please their parents all the time, eventually, everything their parents have will be theirs. We should not consider the reward, the rapture, and the kingdom as the goals of our pursuit.
Madame Guyon said that if we seek the reward only for the sake of the reward itself, we become fallen. The goal of all our pursuits must be God and Christ, and we must pay any price to gain Him. If we sought Him with such singleness of heart, how could we not mature early? How could we not receive the reward?
If you have read the biography of George Müller, you will see that in all matters, he sought God’s direction and tried to perceive God’s feeling through fellowship. He wrote a book entitled Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller.
Müller sought the Lord in fellowship in all matters of life, whether great or small. One particularly striking thing is that after his death, people tried to make an inventory of Müller’s possessions but found nothing because he had given himself and everything he had for the love of Christ.
In the eyes of men, he was utterly poor after his death, unlike many people today who leave behind great inheritances for their children to fight over. However, in the eyes of God, Müller was after God’s heart and pleasing to Him.
We have repeatedly said that the goal of paying the price is that we may gain God and have Him added to us and mingled with us, thus replacing everything that is ours. Those who desire this willingly reject their natural life and disposition and accept God’s life and nature.
They live and walk not according to their own wisdom but according to God’s wisdom, leaving behind their possessions, relatives, fame, and status, and desiring only for God to enter into them and become everything they have. This is what the Bible means when it says we must leave everything, follow the Lord, and lose all things to gain Christ. This is what it means to pay the price, and this is the result of paying the price.
Only those who pay the price see God working in them both to will and to do, see Christ being magnified in them at all times, whether by life or by death, and can say that for them, to live is Christ. They are full of Christ, full of God, and can be used by God.
In summary, the first requirement for us to be used by God is divine visitation, which does not come from us but from God. God’s visitation is His coming to us to visit us. This is the beginning of God’s process in using us. Whenever we have a desire to serve God, we can be sure that He has reached and visited us. However, merely having this desire does not qualify us to be used by God, for on our part, we still need to pay the price.
One day, God came to Isaiah, and as a result, Isaiah decided to go and work for God (Is 6:1-8). However, at that moment, he was not yet able to be used by God; he still had to pay a price. The result of paying the price is that by renouncing everything we have, we accept everything that God has. Only such people can be used by God. Therefore, paying the price is the basic requirement and factor for us to be useful to God.
Enjoy More: Hymn 307
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