February - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

38
The Free Presbyterian Magazine
This submission includes obedient service, for our great Master goes on
to say, “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me”. True self-renunciation
shows itself in the obedient imitation of Christ. “Father, glorify Thy name,”
means waiting the Lord’s bidding and running in His ways. If the petition is
written out at length, it runs thus: Help me to copy the Saviour’s example;
help me to follow in His blessed footsteps. This is my desire: to honour my
heavenly Father passively by bearing His will, and to glorify Him actively
by doing His will. Lord, help me to do both of these, and never let me forget
that I am not my own, but wholly my Lord’s.
The prayer appears to me to be most properly used when it is made a
personal one: “Father, glorify Thy name in me. I have received so much
mercy; get some glory by me, I pray Thee.” I think you must have noticed
that, in this world, the man who really lives is the man who more than his
fellows has learned to live for others and for God. You do not care for the
preacher whose object is to display his own powers; you go away dissatisfied
after hearing his best orations; but if any man desires only your soul’s good
and God’s glory, you will put up with much eccentricity from him and bear
with many infirmities, because instinctively you love and trust the man who
forgets himself.
Now, I beg you to try and consider in yourselves what you thus see in
preachers. If any of you are living for yourselves you will be unloveable; if
you act even under the ambition to be loved you will miss your mark; but if
you will love for love’s sake, if you will seek to be Christlike, if you will lay
yourselves out to glorify God, to increase His kingdom, and to bless your
fellow men, you will live in the highest and noblest sense. Do not seek
your own greatness, but labour to make Jesus great and you will live.
Christians live by dying. Kill self and Christ shall live in you and you
yourself shall most truly live. The way upward in true life and honour is to
go downward in self-humiliation. Renounce all and you shall be rich; have
nothing and you shall have all things. Try to be something and you shall
be nothing; be nothing and you shall have; that is the great lesson which
Jesus would teach us but which we are slow to learn. “Father, glorify Thy
name,” means, Let the corn of wheat be buried out of sight, to lose itself in
its outgrowth. Self, you art a dead thing, be laid deep in the sepulchre. You
rotten carcase, you are an offence unto me. Do not poison my life; mar my
motives, spoil my intentions, hinder my self-denials and defile the chastity
of my heart. You prompt me to make provision for the flesh: away with you!
“Father, glorify Thy name.”
(3.) In our text, a new care is paramount. The man has forgotten self, and
self is buried like a grain of wheat, but now he begins to care for God’s