Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs.

After the first strike for God and for the right, God allowed Moses to be driven into blank discouragement, He sent him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years.

At the end of that time, God appeared and told Moses to go and bring forth His people, and Moses said - "Who am I, that I should go?"

In the beginning Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first.

He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.

We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing, then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call, and we get the quaver in and say - "Oh, who am I?"

We have to learn the first great stride of God - "I AM THAT I AM hath sent thee."

We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God (see Matthew 3:17).

We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision - "This is what God wants me to do;" but we have not got into God's stride.

If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead.

Yes, yes, a carpenter, same trade as mine! How it warms my heart as I read that line.

I can stand the hard work, I can stand the poor pay, For I’ll see that Carpenter at no distant day.

MALTBIE D. BABCOCK

It suits our best sense that the One who spoke of “putting the hand to the plow” and “taking the yoke upon us” should have made plows and yokes Himself, and people do not think His words less heavenly for not smelling of books and lamps. Let us not make the mistake of those Nazarenes: that Jesus was a carpenter was to them poor credentials of divinity, but it has been Divine credentials to the poor ever since. Let us not be deceived by social ratings and badges of the schools.

Carey was a cobbler, but he had a map of the world on his shop wall, and outdid Alexander the Great in dreaming and doing.

What thoughts were in the mind of Jesus at His workbench? One of them was that the kingdoms of this world should become the kingdoms of God— at any cost! SELECTED

“What is that in your hand?” (Exodus 4:2).

Is it a hoe, a needle, a broom? A pen or a sword? A ledger or a schoolbook? A typewriter or a telegraph instrument? Is it an anvil or a printer’s rule? Is it a carpenter’s plane or a plasterer’s trowel? Is it a throttle or a helm? Is it a scalpel or a yardstick? Is it a musical instrument or the gift of song?

Whatever it is, give it to God in loving service.

Many a tinker and weaver and stonecutter and hard worker has had open windows and a sky, and a mind with wings!

The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the Lord loved you.

We love him, because he first loved us.

You . . . hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

His son . . . who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.

Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine will, but the will of him that sent me.

The cup which my father hath given me, shall I not drink it?

The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.

My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,

Mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.

Lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.—Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.—The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love.

The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.—Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.