| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 10 |
Page 7 |
We live worthily only when we do what God sent us here to do. A splendid career in the sight of men has no splendor in heaven’s sight if it be but the prompting of human ambition, if it be not God’s thought for the life. The praise that pleases God best is that which is sung in the place where our life belongs. Heaven misses in the chorus the sweet voice strayed from the lowly place where is should be heard, and singing now in some sphere of honor to which it was never assigned.
Not the making of a fine career, therefore, but the simple doing of God’s will is the one true aim in living. Thus only can we achieve real success. If we do this, though we fail in the earthly race, we shall not fail in God’s sight. We may make no name among men, may rear for ourself no monument of earthly glory, but if we please God by a life of obedience and lowly service, and build up within us a character in which divine qualities shine, we shall have attained abiding success.
The only way, therefore, to make our life nobly and truly successful is to devote ourself to the doing of God’s will. It is not the things we want to do that are the best, but the things God would have us do. Ofttimes these may be things which to our thought it is scarecely worth while to do, and the turning aside from our fine schemes and conspicuous efforts to attend to these trivialities may appear to be a wasting of talent and time. But always God’s will is the grandest thing we can find to do in all the world, though it be in men’s eyes the lowliest task our hands can do.
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