Don’t worry about doing something great,” a missionary once told me. “Be great by doing what you can where God has placed you. It will pay off after awhile.”
An old Moravian prayer says, “From the desire of being great, good Lord deliver us!”
When Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the 18th century Prince of Preachers, was eighteen years old, he was seeking God’s will for his life. Feeling he needed more theological training, he made application to Regent’s Park College, and an interview was set between the head of the college and young Spurgeon. The meeting was to be in Cambridge at the home of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher.
Spurgeon rose early that morning and had special prayer, seeking God’s guidance in the matter, and then he proceeded to Mr. Macmillan’s house. He rang the bell, and a servant showed him into the parlor. There he sat for two hours until at last his patience broke. He called for the servant and was horrified to discover that she had forgotten to announce his arrival, had not let anyone know he was there, had forgotten all about him.
Meanwhile the head of the college had sat waiting in an adjoining room until his patience, too, had been exhausted, and he had left Cambridge for London by train without the interview ever having taken place.
Spurgeon was deeply perturbed, and his first impulse was to run after the man, to chase him to London, to explain what had happened. But he took a long walk out in the country to calm down, and as he walked along, a verse of Scripture came to his mind so forcibly that he almost seemed to hear it audibly. He later said that it could not have been any clearer if Christ Himself had appeared to speak it aloud, so strong did this verse suddenly hit his mind. It was Jeremiah 45:5: And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them!
The Lord seemed to be telling him not to worry about the misunderstanding and not to make extraordinary efforts to clear it up. As a result, Spurgeon never did make it to college, but it didn’t matter. He became the most powerful and successful and fruitful minister in the history of Victorian England, and he later said that he “a thousand times thanked the Lord very heartily for the strange providence which forced his steps into another and far better path.”
Missionary statesman J. Oswald Sanders once wrote about a time when he wanted a particular position in the Christian world very much. Having friends in positions of influence, he was about to see if some strings could be pulled to turn the job in his direction. He was toying with the idea of doing a little lobbying.
But while walking down the main street in Auckland, New Zealand one day, turning the matter over in his mind, he walked past His Majesty’s Theatre and a verse of Scripture came to his mind with tremendous authority and powerful conviction: And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them! (Jeremiah 45:5)
“The words came just as though it was God speaking. There were crowds all around me, and no one else heard the voice, but I heard it all right!” Sanders later said. “I believe that was a real turning point in my service to the Lord.” As a result, he did not seek the position, but it later opened to him on its own in God’s good timing.
As a young man, I had the opportunity of working for awhile with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. During one of Mr. Graham’s crusades, I kept scheming to meet the great evangelist and to have my picture taken with him. At the same time, I was reading through the Gospel of John.
That’s when I came to chapter 13.
In John 13, as Jesus began to wash the disciples’ feet, He removed His garments. The use of the plural indicates that Jesus removed both His seamless robe and his tunic, which was a sort of long undershirt. That left Him in nothing but loincloth and sandals.
It wasn’t necessary to strip so completely just to wash feet. The act of washing a guest’s feet was a biblical custom which anyone could—and usually did—perform fully clothed. Why, then, did Jesus remove his garments?
The loincloth was the garb of an oriental servant, a slave. Our Lord was showing us that the Son of Man, who had laid aside the garments of heavenly glory to come to this earth, did so as one taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7).
And the Son of Man expects the same attitude in us as well.
I forgot about meeting Billy Graham and focused instead on fitting nicely into my loincloth.
“Many through wishing to be great have failed to be good,” said Spurgeon.
Jesus put it this way: Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. (Mark 10:43–45)
Robert J. Morgan