Our soul’s history with God is frequently the history of the passing of the hero. Over and over again, God has to remove our King Uzziahs—our friends and personal heroes—so that he can take his rightful place in our lives. Often when this happens, we faint and fail and get discouraged.

Take it to heart: In the year I lost the person who held the place of God in my life, what did I do? Did I give up on everything? Did I become sick and disheartened? Or did I see the Lord?

My ability to see God depends upon the state of my character. Character determines revelation. Before I can say, “I saw the Lord,” there must be something corresponding to God in my character, something I received when I was born again in the Spirit. Until I am born again and begin to see the kingdom of God, I see through the cloud of my own prejudices. I need an internal purification as well as the surgical operation of external events. It must be God first, God second, and God third, until my life is faced steadily with God and no one else is of any importance.

Whom seek they or whom find? for in all the world
There is none but thee, my God, there is none but thee.

—Frederic W. H. Myers

Keep paying the price. Let God see that you are willing to seek none but him.

Wisdom from Oswald

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount