The Man God Uses
by H. L. Roush
From "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, March 1965
"The Lord said to him, Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of Mine to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the descendants of Israel; for I will make clear to him how much he will be afflicted and must endure and suffer for My name's sake." (Acts 9:15-16).
There is no man on the face of the earth who lives such an unusual life as the man God would see fit to use for His glory and praise. If he is to be God's messenger, Christ's shepherd, the Spirit's vessel, then he of necessity must be an instrument prepared by the hand of God in any way needed to make it fit. The message he bears is a living message, for it is the life of Christ Himself. Since it is a living message he proclaims by the Spirit's power, then he, of necessity, must be made to "live" this message within the confines of his own experience. He may soar to the heights of Mt. Zion's glory today that he might proclaim that he has seen God's King on the holy hill of Zion, and tomorrow he might find himself sinking in the depths of despair that he might learn and reveal to others the sweetest LILY that ever graced the valley of defeat: JESUS!
He may meet with Jesus and Moses on the mount of transfiguration today and tomorrow be laid bleeding and dead in the streets of Jerusalem and made a gazing stock to a Christ-rejecting world, He may wax bold one moment among the philosophers of this world as he eloquently tells the riches of God's grace and in a moment's time be found in weakness and in fear and trembling, having contemptible speech and looked upon by others as a false apostle. All this... that God might mold in his soul an unshakable determination to preach Christ and Him crucified.
God tunes his emotions like a fine harpist before each concert that he might pluck from them the music that thrills the soul and fills his hearers with joy. It may require a tightening on one, a loosening of others, but when all are under the skilled hand of the Master, each one brings forth its hidden message. He is lifted to some height of truth to be smashed on the rocks of unbelief a moment later that he might feel the hopelessness of his hearers and preach to them with a compassionate heart.
He is constantly on the forge, and ere the heat of one battle be passed, the hammer and the tongs begin to fashion a new tool for the glory of God. These experiences try the man of God and often make him a monster of unreasonable proportions. All these violent dealings and his business with God in deep waters tend to turn him without apparent cause to depression and almost unbearable seasons of despondency. His anchor in every storm is the solemn truth that the power of Christ's resurrection can only be transfused through the fellowship of His sufferings.
"God Deals With His Servant"
That these "things" are the work and will of God cannot be denied in the words of Romans 8:28. It might do well to remind ourselves of dear old Elijah, who one day while walking with God, found himself nearer heaven's home than earth's and went on to glory. When he was at last missed by the "clergy" of his day, they wrote his obituary in the ironic words, "...peradventure the SPIRIT OF THE LORD hath taken him up, and cast him upon some MOUNTAIN, or into some VALLEY" (2 Kings 2:16). Thus had been his earthly portion, and in the end his home-going in the whirlwind brought him the answers to the unanswerable experiences of his soul, for they were found unto praise, glory and honor. Elijah is gone, but his mantle fluttered to earth, and Elisha wore it for a season and went on to glory.
But the rough garment of the wilderness prophet has been handed down from age to age, and yet it is the same. Let the man who would wear it lightly beware, for with the mantle goes the juniper tree experiences, the hatred of all earth's Jezebels and Ahabs, the indifference of the Obadiahs, and also, bless God, the double portion of Elijah's spirit! The chariots and horses of fire and the smiting of Jordan's waters! But let all concerned remember that when the hoary head of the prophet hangs down in defeat, and he weeps under his juniper tree with a homesickness for Heaven, that none less than an angel of God can touch him.
Depression without reason is a monster that cannot be reckoned with. Were it not for the cakes and cruse of water in a needy time, these vessels of God would succumb in the death grip of that undefinable... intangible... unexplainable... unspeakable cloud of gloom and mist of darkness, called DEPRESSION. There are, as the angel said, times when the journey is too great for him, and he must sleep until God ministers to him and enables him to go on for 40 days and nights more in the strength of that ministry.
Our brother Peter warned that we should not think it "strange concerning the fiery trial which IS to try you, ...as though some STRANGE thing happened unto you." No, this is nothing strange to the many who have gone on to glory before us. This was the common lot of them all. We cannot take too lightly Paul's solemn words that he had "trouble" in Asia... that he was "pressed out of measure"... far "above strength", and that when this tempest had reached its zenith, the great heart of the man that shook Rome "despaired even of life!" We cannot soon forget this testimony that while in Macedonia, his flesh had no rest. He was troubled on every side, Without were fightings, and within were fears. Drink deeply from the cup of his sufferings drawn from the well of experience when he says that he was cast down and in desperate need of encouragement.
See Elijah after routing Baal's prophets, weeping like a child and trembling like a leaf in the fall wind. See Moses in his tent, telling God that he can go no further with this stiff-necked people. Listen to the many witnesses that compass us about and see if every man God saw fit to use as a polished shaft in His quiver of arrows was not straightened in the press of circumstances too great to bear and tempered under the weight of despair. Luther often leaped from the mountain peaks of joy into the fathomless depths of discouragement and, I am told, sobbed himself into his last sleep like a frightened child. Some of the means employed in these trying times might give us some insight into the burden of them.
"He Lives a Lonely Life"
"At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me." (2 Tim. 4:16). "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world." (2 Tim. 4:10). "Elijah wept... I, even I only, am left: and they seek my life to take it" (1 Kings 19:10).
The man God would see fit, by grace, to use for the blessing of others and the glory of Himself must be made to stand alone in the presence of God. Only a man, who has been ALONE in the wilderness for three and a half years, will ever have what it takes to face an Ahab and a Jezebel. The man God uses to call down fire from Heaven will have to submit himself to the discipline of loneliness. If a man would have the revelation of Jesus Christ shown to him, he must accept the loneliness of Patmos' Isle.
The revelation of the grace of God is almost always and surely learned in the solitude of Arabia, when even the brethren withhold the fellowship of a handshake for 14 years. A man who would know God in the burning bush, must suffer rejection at the hands of the world and brethren alike and retire to the backside of the Midian desert to be ALONE with God. He is called upon to leave "all" to follow Jesus. This often requires that he be forced further outside the camp than others that he might challenge the saints to a higher walk. He learns to worship, leaning on his staff with a look of apprehension at all who would offer to "support" or strengthen him, lest it turn out to be only another broken reed and it pierce his often-pierced hand. This walk and schooling called "loneliness" brings two results in his life.
1. When he tries to explain the source of his sorrow in order to find sympathy or relief, he finds that the inner conflicts cannot be revealed to others, lest men count him mad and God be robbed of the glory of being ALL to him. He must suffer with it alone like a fire that burns in the bones that only God can know, understand and quench. This gives him a tendency to sense no human sympathy or understanding.
2. His burden becomes heavier when, like the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane, in His greatest agony, He looks in vain at sleeping brethren unaware of His dear soul's fear and need. He is often shocked by the apparent indifference of the brethren and returns to unknown agony with a burden heavier than ever. This often leaves him exposed to the sin of a critical, fault finding heart.
"He Lives a Burdened Life"
He carries about in his heart, if he be the Lord's vessel, a burden none can share but those who know it firsthand. The great weight of divine responsibility makes him cry, "Who is sufficient for these things?" He oftentimes would quit his post and flee to a lawful occupation for relief and rest but is bound by an inescapable, "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." He groans in his earthly house, being burdened, and would forsake all and go fishing if it were not for the constant reminder that there will be a day when he must come dripping wet out of the sea of life to face a heavy-hearted Lord and hear Him say, "Lovest thou Me?"
This burden the man of God tries from time to time to carry for himself. He cries, "This people be too much for me." He would sink beneath its load until he learns that the burden is the Lord's and His burden is light and His yoke is easy. The constant burden to study the Word of God tends to make him weary as the Preacher said in Ecc. 12:12, "Much study is a weariness of the flesh." The word wearied conveys to us the thought of exhaustion and fatigue. A Demas, who forsakes us... a brother, who must be withstood to the face... a professed brother, who lifts up his heel against us while eating the bread of love and fellowship with us can take from us in a few hours what ten years of honest toil with the hands could not.
