| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 10 |
Page 8 |
An autobiographical passage in the life of Norman McLeod illustrates this. “My life,” he says, “is not what I would have chosen. I often long for quiet, for reading, and for thought. It seems to me to be a very paradise to be able to read, to think, go deep into things, to gather the glorious riches of intellectual culture… God has forbidden it to me in his providence. I must spend hours in receiving people who which to speak to me about all manner of trifles; must reply to letters about nothing; must engage in public work on everything; must employ my life on what seems uncongenial, vanishing, temporary, waste. Yet God knows me better than I know myself. He knows my gifts, my powers, my failings, and my weakness; what I can do and what not do. So I desire to be led, and not to lead; to follow him. I am quite sure he has thus enabled me to do a great deal more in ways which seemed to me almost a waste of life, in advancing his kingdom, than I would have done any other way.”
The most successful life is the one which falls in the most cheerfully and the most completely with the will of God. It will not be an indolent life, nor will it be aimless and purposeless. It is the will of God that every power of our being shall be brought out, trained, and disciplined to its highest possibility, and devoted to the noblest and worthiest service. But the dominant influence in our life should always be the will of God and not any ambition of our own. Then shall we fulfil the purpose God had in his thought for us, when he made us and sent us into the world. And this will be the noblest career possible for us.
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