When God promises us a great blessing, and we ask how we may know that we shall have it, the answer is always the same: By your own sacrifice to Me. God cannot fulfill His richest promises to any of us until we have offered up to Him, in utter completeness of surrender, ourselves. Then He can do glorious things for and with our lives.

And then, also, “the birds of prey” attack a life as never before. The devil does not like to see any life sacrificed to God, for he knows how mightily God will use that life to defeat the works of darkness. So the birds of prey come down. We must expect to be attacked and tempted more fiercely and continuously after our life has been wholly surrendered to God than we ever were before. MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH

There is a Chinese legend of a potter who sought for many years to put a certain tint on the vases he made, but all his efforts failed. At last discouraged and in despair, he threw himself into his furnace, and his body was consumed in the fire; then, when the vases were taken out, they bore the exquisite color which he had striven so long to produce.

The legend illustrates that truth that we can do our noblest and best work only at cost of self. The alabaster box must be broken before its odors can flow out.

Christ lifted up and saved the world not by an easy, pleasant, successful life in it; but by suffering and dying for it. And we can never bless the world merely by having a good time in it; but only by giving our lives for it.

It takes heart’s blood to heal hearts. Saving of life proves, in the end, the losing of it.

My wild will was captured, yet under the yoke There was pain and not peace at the press of the load; Till the glorious burden the last fiber broke, And I melted like wax in the furnace of God.

And now I have flung myself recklessly out, Like a chip on the stream of His infinite will; I pass the rough rocks with a smile and a shout, And just let my God His dear purpose fulfill.