Willing to be Forgotten

If it were not for his good friend and close companion, I trust we never would have heard of the man – and the world would be all the worse for it; regrettably unaware of another one of whom the world was not worthy – a faithful servant of the living God.
But by God’s grace, the name of Robert Murray M’Cheyne is remembered still to this very day – though surely he never would have labored for this renown (it was just his way – as you will soon see). M’Cheyne was born in 1813 and took his first pastorate in the Church of Scotland in 1835, in the parish of Larbert and Dunipace. He wrote to his friend during this time, “What an interest I feel in Larbert and Dunipace! It is like the land of my birth. Will the Sun of Righteousness ever rise upon it, making its hills and valleys bright with the light of the knowledge of Jesus?” This was much like what Zechariah prophesied concerned the coming of Jesus Christ and about his forerunner, John the Baptist: “the sunrise shall visit us from on high.” He cried aloud with fervency that this prophesy might be true for his people – that God would in his grace visit them, and enliven them with the presence of the Gospel. It was well said by his friend that “The walls of his chamber were witness of his prayerfulness, - I believe of his tears as well of his cries.” M’Cheyne would gladly have given all that he had to give, and he would have held back nothing in his hands, so that the Gospel might be intimately cherished among and by those under his care.
He was to serve in Larbert and Dunipace until the year 1838, when he began the pastoral charge at St. Peter’s Church in Dundee. There, people started to flock to be under his ministry in large numbers, and he drew the attention (and also the high reverence) of many from near and far – so many, in fact, that he began receiving offers from other congregations requesting that he come be their pastor. Most of these other places he received offers from would have offered greater renown and a much easier ministry workload than his undertaking in Dundee. Yet, he refused each offer, and he remained in Dundee. And did he ever! He was relentless in his ministry among those people; often spending six hours a day visiting multiple families before holding an evening service for all those he had visited during the day. He had a great and tender heart not only for the people who sat under him, but for the entire city in which he served.
His health was also quite delicate, and often it was uncertain and most unstable – and the schedule he maintained didn’t help the matter. Near the close of 1838, symptoms arose so terribly in his body that they greatly alarming and deeply troubling to his friends. He could no longer avoid the inevitable questions about his health. His medical advisors insisted that he partake of a complete cessation from all of his ministry labors. He was reluctant to comply with this prescription, but he finally did, while remaining hopeful and expectant that it would be for just a very brief time – perhaps one week or two at most. It would turn out to be, to his great dismay, much longer than that.
M’Cheyne resigned himself and his condition to the purposes of God in the matter. “I sometimes think,” he wrote in one letter, “that a great blessing may come to my people in my absence. Often God does not bless us when we are in the midst of our labours, lest we shall say, ‘My hand and my eloquence have done it.’ He removes us into silence, and then pours ‘down a blessing so that there is no room to receive it;’ so that all that see it cry out, ‘It is the Lord!’” During this time when he was recovering from all that ailed him, an opportunity arose for him to join a mission to Israel. He was ever and always one with a zealous missionary spirit. So, given the ready consent of his medical doctors (who thought the change of climate would do him some good) he agreed to join the efforts.
As he left Dundee for this mission, he remained in fervent prayer for the church and for the people he was leaving there. He prayed specifically that a great revival would be poured out during his extended absence. He wrote this to them, concerning his temporary replacement: “Perhaps there are some of you that never would bend under my ministry, that will melt like wax before the fire under the word of the dear young minister who is to speak to you in my absence. May the Lord give him hundreds for my tens!” In a separate letter, this time to an individual, he wrote (and this is the theme of this book you are holding),
I need to be made willing to be forgotten. Oh, I wish that my heart were quite refined from all self-seeking! I am quite sure that our truest happiness is not to seek our own, - just to forget ourselves, - and to fill up the little space that remains, seeking only, and above all, that our God may be glorified.