Oswald Chambers wrote the following in his book Approved unto God! I love this thought. I had the opportunity to preach the ordination service of a friend and I shared a bit about the idea that we only seek the approval of God. We fall into the trap of man's opinion and approval that can destroy us.

All God’s men are ordinary men made extraordinary by the matter He has given them. God puts His workers where He puts His Son. This is the age of the humiliation of the saints.

 The worker chosen by God has to believe what God wishes him to believe, though it cost agony in the process; the worker who chooses to work for God may believe what he likes. It is the latter class who exploit the Bible.

The test of the worker is that he knows he has been enabled by the Lord Jesus, therefore he works and learns to do it better all the time.

 When I say I am too weak it means I am too strong; and when ever I say “I can’t” it means “I won’t.” When Jesus Christ enables me, I am omnipotently strong all the time.

 To recognise that my Lord counts us faithful removes the last snare of idealising natural pluck. If we have the idea that we must face the difficulties with pluck, we have never recognised the truth that He has counted us faithful; it is His work in me He is counting worthy, not my work for Him. The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. He counts us worthy because He has done everything for us. It is a shameful thing for Christians to talk about “getting the victory”; by this time the Victor ought to have got us so completely that it is His victory all the time, not ours. The overcoming referred to in the Book of the Revelation is not the personal overcoming of difficulties but the overcoming of the very life of God in us while we stand resolutely true to Him.

God does not expect us to imitate Jesus Christ: He expects us to allow the life of Jesus to be manifested in our mortal flesh. God engineers circumstances and brings us into difficult places where no one can help us, and we can either manifest the life of Jesus in those conditions, or else be cowards and say, “I cannot exhibit the life of God there.” Then we deprive God of glory. If you will let the life of God be manifested in your particular human edition—where God cannot manifest it, that is why He called you, you will bring glory to God.

The spiritual life of a worker is literally, God manifest in the flesh.

Are we willing to be broken bread and poured-out wine in Jesus Christ’s hands for others? to be spoilt for this age, for this life, this time, spoilt from every standpoint saving as we can disciple men and women to Him? My life as a worker is the way I say “Thank you” to God for His unspeakable salvation. The hatred and the indignation of the world does not come when we are sanctified; it comes when we try to live our daily life according to the rule of sanctification. It is not preaching sanctification that awakens resentment, but living the life to which sanctification introduces us, the life of oneness with Jesus Christ, and insisting that that oneness be manifested in our practical life.

Oswald Chambers, Approved unto God (Hants UK: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996).