rage; I seek His smiling face.
such an experience, God must sovereignly arrange his environment, making it a practical cross for him to bear. This is exactly what God did. From the very beginning of his ministry, God arranged situations in which he could deny his self by bearing the cross and living by Christ as life.
Throughout the years he was a person under the cross, willing to be opposed, rejected, criticized, and condemned. He would not vindicate himself, excuse himself, reason with people, or explain things in order to reduce his sufferings. He always shunned disclosing things about himself which would let people know what good work he had done for the Lord or what good things he had done for others. He truly lived a crucified life.
In the early years of his ministry, he was excommunicated by his six co-workers. At that time his temperament and his flesh rose up to react to their action, and this inclination was reinforced by the fact that most of the saints who met with them took sides with him. While he was on a trip ministering, letters and cables were sent telling him that he had been excommunicated. At the time he received them, he was restricted from reading them. But while on a boat returning to Foochow, he read the letters and cables and was much provoked. He felt that his six co-workers had unfairly excommunicated him, and he intended to return and vindicate himself. Immediately, however, the Holy Spirit within him made him clear that the Lord would not allow him to vindicate himself, and he was silenced by the Lord. Upon his arrival many brothers and sisters were waiting for him at the pier. They simply could not help telling him how unfairly the six co-workers had dealt with him. They followed him from the pier to his home later that night, and all of their sympathy aroused his temperament, but the Lord strongly forbade him to do anything. Then, as the brothers and sisters crowded around, waiting for a definite word, he told them that the Lord would not allow him to vindicate himself and that he would leave home the next morning for another place in order to stay away from that situation. He asked them to be quiet about it, and this made them all the more disappointed. In that difficult situation he learned a great deal about how to remain in the Lord's death practically and bear the cross in order to live by Christ and for Christ. During that time of suffering, he wrote the following hymn:
1. If I would only stray a bit, Then ease my lot would be; But I recall how Christ my Lord Did suffer faithfully.
2. The world I have forever left And severed all its ties; The way may yet more narrow grow And all against me rise.
3. But though the worldlings glare in rage; I seek His smiling face. Though outward glory others choose, I, His "well done" through grace.
4. My heart's desire is not for fame