Hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps. 1 Peter 2:21.
There is danger of our losing so much in our spiritual experience because we let slip the words that God gives. He speaks to one heart, and He speaks to another heart, and they hear these words and then go away and treat the words as a common thing, and they do not impress the mind. God wants us to take the words home to every heart.
“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him?” (Hebrews 2:2, 3). Here is presented to us the importance of our speaking. God wants us to communicate. Have the treasure house of the heart full, full of the precious words of the Scriptures. Hand it right out; it is the precious message of God to them....
Many speak and act as if they were ashamed of Jesus. They do not think of Him, and introduce Him to their friends. They do not live to glorify Him—ashamed of Jesus, who took humanity that they might have life! ...
You cannot do another's work. Each one has his own peculiar temperament.... We are not to expect that everyone is to travel in our own footprints, but in the footprints of our self-denying Redeemer. Take up the cross and follow Him. He is our Guide. There are perfect footprints; He has made them. We are safe in following Christ. But when we seek [to make] everyone follow some other one, there is where we make a mistake, there is where our differences come in; but we should never have differences. We must believe that others are just as honest before God as we are.
“For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). He had to understand all about the weakness of man, the strength of Satan's temptations. He took humanity right upon Himself, and bore all the temptations of the devil, and He knows what every man has to endure. Consider Christ's pity for man. He knows just how they were born. He knows just how they were surrounded in childhood. You don't know what temptations came with their birth. You don't know the conditions of their parents. Put away all judgment. Judgment belongs to the Son of God. He is the One who is to judge the world.—Manuscript 174, November 14, 1901, “Morning Lesson From Hebrews Two.”
From The Upward Look - Page 332
The Upward Look