The Cost of Fine Needlework

 

The Cost of Fine Needlework

 

By Marie E. Brown

 

“Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known” (RUTH 3:3).

 

YOU REMEMBER THE CONSECRATION Ruth made in the beginning, when she separated herself from her own kindred and her people.  It was a consecration for life or death; she left everything behind, and only such a consecration will ever bring the children of God into the place where it brought Ruth.  She not only made the consecration, but she went into the harvest field and gleaned.  She toiled from the beginning of the harvest to the end.  But now something new comes into her life: “Wash thyself.”  This was not a cleansing from sin nor separation from the world; for that had been done long before.  There is a cleansing of the Word of God that comes to every life as one presses on into Him, a deeper cleansing, our whole being laid open and bare before Him until from within the inner parts doth truth only go forth.

 

Ruth had to have a cleansing from all her work.  She had labored, she had toiled in the harvest field, but there had to be a cleansing from her work. You have heard it said, “That person is a great soul winner.  It’s wonderful how she works for God!”  There is no one who is so full of “works” and who needs such a cleansing as the Christian worker.  We get so filled up with our work, with what we have done, that we need constantly to go to the fountain to wash ourselves lest we be puffed up.  We need a cleansing from all our ambitions and our desires.  Go wash thyself!

 

Then, “anoint thee!”  Ruth, you who have gleaned from morning until night and have washed yourself, you need the anointing.  After such a cleansing, after such an emptying of one’s self, comes the anointing.  The anointing that comes upon the child of God, the “anointing that abideth,” is the mighty power of the eternal God resting upon His child who is yielded unto Him.  Such an one never tries to bring himself up, never tries to make himself somebody.  Low at his feet we are brought into such a living touch with the King of kings that we have His smile upon us always and His glory resting over us.

 

“And put thy raiment on thee.”  Like Ruth, not only are we to have the “anointing that abideth,” but we are to put our raiment upon us.  You will find the raiment of the bride described in the forty-fifth Psalm:  “All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia. . . The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is wrought gold.  She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework” (vv. 8, 13, 14).  The bride will not be brought to the King until she is clothed with this garment.  “Her clothing is of wrought gold.”  That means suffering, doesn’t it? It means going through the crucible and having the dross burned out so that nothing is left but the pure gold.  Then this pure gold is taken and made into threads, and they are worked into your garment in fine needlework.

 

Did you ever have any fine needlework put on your garment?  You know who puts it on, don’t you?  Your brother and your sister – the saints.  They are the only ones who can bring the finest needlework into your garment.  You wouldn’t pay any attention to the needlework anybody else would try to put on your garment; no one else could do it so effectively as your brother or sister, the one nearest you, the one whom you thought a great deal of and looked up to, the one whom you have had as an ideal and thought was spiritual and knew the Lord.  These are the ones who can do the most beautiful needlework in our garments.

 

You know every time the needle goes through it pricks.  And then some of the threads have to be pulled.  If you and I are to have on the fine needlework raiment, we must hold still while the stitches are being inwrought.  Only then can the rose be made.  And I know you want that beautiful “Rose of Sharon” wrought in your garment, don’t you?  And the “Lily of the Valley”?  It is then that others will know that you have been with Jesus.  In Revelation we read, “The Bride hath made herself ready”; she has something to do.  Sometimes we fold our arms and say, “Lord Jesus, do it all,” but there is something you and I must do.  We must be yielded vessels and emptied.  “If we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him.”  This Bride that you and I expect to be a part of will never meet the King until we have been arrayed in raiment of fine needlework.  Perhaps I can illustrate this idea of fine needlework. Years ago when I had gone to a camp meeting to get a real touch from God and did not seem to be getting it, I went off in the woods to be alone with God.  Then I asked Him to give me something out of His Word.  He led me very definitely to the Scripture, “Many are called, but few are choice” (Matt. 22:14).  [Editor’s note: the Greek word for “chosen” found in most translations of Matthew 22:14 comes from a word meaning “made choice.”]

 

I said, “Lord, what does that mean?”

 

He brought to my mind two cut-glass dishes that I had.  They were exactly the same size and the same weight, but there was a great difference in their cuttings.  One had great, large cuts; the other had small ones.  When I would put the finely-cut one in the sunlight, how it sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow?  When the Lord brought those two dishes before me, He said, “Now one of these dishes is a choice one.  You are very careful of that one.  You use the other all the time, but this one you are particular about because it is especially beautiful.”

 

“Yes,” I said, “that is true. I am afraid it will get broken.  I wouldn’t care so much about the other.”

 

What made the difference in these two dishes?  The more beautiful one had the finer cuts.  It had much more done on it.  It was choice.  So it is with people.  It takes a great deal of cutting to make them choice.  “Many are called, but few are choice.”  Few want to be made choice, for the cutting hurts.

 

I told this cut-glass dish story at a meeting once, and when I was through, someone of whom I thought a great deal gave me one of the deepest cuts I ever had in my life. I got down on my face and said, “Lord, how is this?”

 

And He said, “Didn’t you lift up your hand and say you wanted to be one of those choice vessels?  This is just a cut in your glass dish.  Nobody could have cut it as she did?”

 

When the Lord showed me that, I said, “I’d just as soon she would put in another cut because I really want my dish to be choice.”

 

Now the natural man doesn’t like the cuts nor the needlework.  The cuts hurt and the stitches, too, because we are very sensitive beings.  Some people excuse themselves by saying, “I am very sensitive.”  Then God will have to take the sensitiveness out of you!  When He begins to cut, if you will hold still, it will go.  I was very sensitive, too, but God hammered and cut and slashed me because I was saying to Him in the closet, “Jesus, I must be like You.  Don’t pay any attention to me, no matter how much I object.  I don’t want to hinder You, dear Lord.  Go on with Your work regardless of my feelings.”

 

Everyone who spends time alone with God and comes into real fellowship and living touch with Him will have that cry in his heart.  And if you have ever prayed a prayer for the Lord to perfect you, don’t be surprised when you come out of your prayer closet if someone starts to embroider a nice, big rose on your garment or a good “cut” on your dish.  If you are not getting some needlework done every day, you are not where God wants you, because we cannot let a day go by without the Holy Spirit working on us, making us ready for His coming.

 

The Lord may send you to some mission, into some hard place in order that He can work fine needlework in you.  You do not understand why you are going through such trials, but He heard your cry over there in that secret closet, “Lord, make me like Thee.  Lord, make me ready for Thy coming.  Lord, prepare me to meet Thee at any cost.”  All right,” and He began to work.  But you fuss and wonder why the Lord ever sent you down there, and why He permitted you to get such a blow.  You say you can’t bear it, but He works on just the same.  He is answering your prayer, uttered in the closet, and He is so good to do it.

 

After the raiment is put on, what next?  “Get thee down!”  Where?  “To the floor.”  That is about as low as you can get.  The King suffered shame, knew abasement, and His bride must be like Him.  He was reproached and called names, and the bride will be, too.  Let me share with you an experience of mine when the Lord took me “down to the floor.”

 

When the work of Glad Tidings was only about a year old, before I was married I was living with a family which apparently thought a lot of me and treated me as their daughter.  They had been converted through me – ‘I had converted them’ – and you know what kind of conversion that is!  Now I had early realized that this life upon which we had entered when we got the baptism in the Holy Spirit meant one of two things: crucifixion of the self-life or losing the anointing.  I had been crying to the Lord to crucify the self in me. Then one day the Lord told me to leave that home.

 

“Oh, how can I ever leave this family?”  I cried to the Lord.  But I finally obeyed and left them and took a little apartment.  Then the fight began.  I had been with them five months, and when I left, they thought they could turn the people of the mission against me.  Not only that, but they went to another church every Sunday morning and told the people there that I was a liar and a thief and that speaking in tongues was of the devil. It was hard for me to die.  When people came to me, I would explain my side of the story.  But I felt something within me saying, “Don’t vindicate yourself.”  But I would tell myself that I had to explain for the sake of the Lord’s work, and that it wasn’t for my own interests that I was speaking!

 

One morning two women came to my house and said, “Now we want to hear from your own lips about this thing, whether it was this way or that way.”

 

While they were talking, I started to cry and something within me said, “Don’t vindicate yourself.”

 

The impression was so strong that I didn’t dare disobey.  I just fell on my face and said, 

“God won’t let me say anything.”  It hurt my flesh not to be able to explain.  I had never been a thief and not to be able to tell them so was taking me though the most painful crucifixion.

 

Now as I was crying to the Lord, He brought before me a picture of a big, handsome, well-equipped soldier.  He had on a breastplate and carried a shield. The fiery darts were coming at him thick and fast and I could see them sticking in his legs, arms, and head.

 

I said, “Lord, that is I; this is just what they are doing.” 

 

Then The Lord showed me a tiny soldier, and he had the same shield that the big soldier had – the shield of faith – but the shield completely protected the tiny soldier because he was smaller than the shield.  I saw the lesson.  I said, “Lord, I am too big.  Let the darts come.  I want to be that little soldier.”

 

Ah, when you get little, the fiery darts won’t hurt you!  You will be saved from the strife of tongues.  The shield of faith will cover you.  Whenever you find anything hitting you, just know that you are too big and you had better let the Lord cut you down to size.  You must “go down to the floor.”

 

And now let us note Naomi’s next injunction to Ruth, “And make not thyself known.”  Ruth was not only to get down to the floor, but she was not to make herself known.  Don’t let anybody know you are down there.  You don’t have to tell them now humble you are!  This is a day when people want to be know, but we must be hidden away in Him.  There is so much advertising of men, even in the churches.  Preachers are called for meetings because they have great names and will draw the crowds.  But this popularity must never be the goal of one who would be in the bride of Christ.  Oh, it is far greater to be His bride, clothed with fine needlework, hidden away and unknown, than to be the greatest preacher in the world.  It is not in works, not in great parade, not in popularity that Christ finds His greatest satisfaction, but in that secret fellowship, that hidden life, that the saint shares with Him.

 

If this truth could be impressed upon everyone who has been called by Him and he would allow himself to be separated and set apart for the Master, then he would have real power to go forth and bring blessings to multitudes – not in his own name, but in Christ’s.  And as we wait before Him, He can empty us of that desire for fame and popularity.

 

I like to dwell on this thought of not making oneself known for I feel that it is here so many have failed God.  The Lord is longing to have us ready for His coming.  I think sometimes as I wait before Him of what His heart desires for His bride, that she should be made like Himself.  But how far short we Christians come because we are not willing to be unknown.  But when that life of “death” has been wrought in us, you will find the sweetness and love of Jesus manifest.

 

Now let us notice that after Ruth had gone down to the floor, clothed in her fine needlework, Boaz, her prospective bridegroom, spoke to her saying, “Who art thou?”

 

Then she answered, “I am Ruth thine handmaid” – not a great worker, not a great soul-winner, just a handmaiden.  “Spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid: for thou art a near kinsman,” meaning redeemer.

 

Thus we see a beautiful picture of what awaits us when we fall at our Master’s feet.  He will clothe us with His garment.  We will be covered by the skirt of the Almighty!  Think of His covering us!  Think of the skirt of the Almighty One protecting us!  So let us wash ourselves, allow the Holy Spirit to anoint us, put on our garments of fine needlework and go down to the floor.  Then when He finds us there, He will cover us with His skirt.