CO 12:9{When there are great natural gifts people give the credit to them instead of to the grace which alone did the real work, and thus God is defrauded of the glory. So that, to say it reverently, God can get more glory out of a feeble instrument because then it is more obvious that the excellency of the power is of God and not of us.
Do you not really believe that the Holy Spirit is just as able to draw a soul to Jesus if He will by your whisper of the one word, "Come," as by an eloquent sermon an hour long? I do. At the same time, as it is evidently God's way to work through these intellects of ours, we have no more right to expect Him to use a mind which we are willfully neglecting and taking no pains whatever to fit for His use than I should have to expect you to write a beautiful inscription with my pen if I would not take the trouble to wipe it and mend it.
Oh, sometimes strangely I forget, and, learning o'er and o'er,
A lesson all with tear-drops wet, which I had learned before.
He chides me not, but waits awhile, then wipes my heavy eyes:
Oh, what a Teacher is our God, so patient and so wise!
If others sadly bring to me a lesson hard and new,
I often find that helping them has made me learn it too.
Or, had I learned it long before, my toil is overpaid.
If so one tearful eye may see one lesson plainer made.