MORNING MANNA 3-26-23
CHANGED
The following is an article I wrote about seven years ago. I am repeating it because I need it. Hopefully you will need it also.- HDS
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. “–2 Cor. 3:18
I met Major Ian Thomas in Jackson, Tn. more than 40 years ago and was greatly impressed. You can check out his biography on Wikipedia and I suspect you will be impressed also. I met him at a time in my life when I was running myself ragged trying to serve the Lord and in great need of learning what he speaks about in the following comments.
After surrendering to preach at the age of 15 he later started a “slum club” down in the East End of London “out of a sheer desire to win souls, to go out and get them. I was a windmill of activity until, at the age of nineteen, every moment of my day was packed tight with doing things. Thus by the age of nineteen, I had been reduced to a state of complete exhaustion spiritually, until I felt that there was no point going on.”
Listen carefully to what he says next, “Then, one night in November, that year, just at midnight, I got down on my knees before God, and I just wept in sheer despair. I said, ‘With all my heart I have wanted to serve Thee. I have tried to my uttermost and I am a hopeless failure.’ That night things happened. The Lord seemed to make plain to me that night, through my tears of bitterness: ‘You see, for seven years, with utmost sincerity, you have been trying to live for Me, on My behalf, the life that I have been waiting for seven years to live through you.'” Thomas later reflected: “I got up the next morning to an entirely different Christian life, but I want to emphasize this: I had not received one iota more than I had already had for seven years!”
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
Humble, Tx.
