The Good, Great and the Old to learn from.
Chuck Swindall, the great Bible teacher and author I admire wrote the following about the long gone authors and saints in his book " So you want to be like Christ?".
"Those long-ago authors took a lot of time to turn over a phrase in their mind. They held it up to the light to examine it from one angle, then got underneath it to look at it from the prospective, and then held it against the mirror of Scripture. They were meditating with ink on paper, and the result is marvelous!
They didn't write to entertain the hurried reader. They couldn't have cared less if their book was marketed or if it sold a hundred copies. They didn't write to make a best seller list, they wrote in order to deepen. And you can tell it! They poured their thoughts on paper, assuming the reader would also take time to turn it over in his or her mind.
Alan Redpath in his book, Blessings Out of Buffeting, writes as follows:
"All the great men of God have been so simple, just as little children. I could bring in an array of them to your mind-Isaiah and Paul from the Word of God, Bunyan, William Carey, Handley Moule, Hudson Taylor, D.L.Moody, Adoniram Judson to mention just a few, but these men with brilliant minds were basically as simple as little children in their walk with God.
A man may be a saint without having many of the qualities which the world today rates very highly, but he will never be a saint without simplicity of soul, a simplicity that is in Christ. It was this that burned in the heart of Martin Luther in the days of the Reformation when he said, " Let us get through to God. Give us a basic, dynamic personal simplicity of faith in Jesus Christ." "
" Live with the steady superiority over life. Don't be afraid of misfortune. Do not yearn after happiness. It is , after all, all the same. The bitter doesn't last forever. And the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold. And if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides, if your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk and your arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom...whom should you envy?"
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Oh, my friends, don't we yearn to learn from these great saints of God and choose to slow down and simplify our lives in our ever hurrying and material consuming world we live in.
I truly yearn to be like the authors of the old who Swindall writes about-the Christian author who don't write to make a best seller list and cared less about how many copies his book got sold. Instead, I want to be the author who wants to deepen the faith and strengthen the walk of the readers with God. But, to make my want and wishing to become a reality, I need to examine the depth of my devotion to God. Otherwise, I become a hypocrite. My knowledge of scripture and life experiences and writing skill may carry me some distance to earn dollars and reputation. But, to dig deep and bring out beautiful outcome of Christlikeness, my heart need to burn with passion for Christ and have the depth I strive to bring in my readers.
