EFFECTIVE SERVICE
‘Workers together with Him.’
All effective Church work has its essence in the spiritual life of the worker. That life is replenished continually by union with the Life and Person of our Lord.
I. The tendency to outward activity has become a spiritual danger. Three cautions, therefore, necessary to all who take up Christian work.
(a) Beware of undertaking too much outward work.
(b) Be careful to observe strictly set times and rules of personal devotion.
(c) Examine the soul carefully from time to time—ask, Does the active life never outstrip the devotional?
II. Spiritual helps and means of grace are of the greatest importance for the life of the worker’s own soul.
(a) To begin with personal devotion.—The early morning prayer; a short midday devotion; a short prayer offered before entering upon any work. These should be carefully observed.
(b) Seasons of spiritual retirement (e.g. the Quiet Day, the ‘Yearly Retreat’) form another real help to Christian workers.
(c) The Holy Eucharist is, to the Christian worker, his crowning help, the source of all spiritual strength.
—Rev. J. P. F. Davidson.
Illustration
‘The Christian religion does not consist in modes of speech and outward forms, but in living deeds. Christians, and especially Christian ministers, are the Bible-leaves in which men read the character of Christianity. “Like priest like people.” Therefore Satan makes every effort to shake the faith or shatter the piety of the Christian pastor, in order that offence may be given and the ministry blamed. Let it be noted that St. Paul is not writing this to his fellow Apostles, but to the Corinthians; and as there is a rightful sense in which every true believer is a minister and a priest, he puts his example before them to be followed. Every Christian is therefore to seal his words by his life. By their defection the ministry is blamed. See! this is the fruit of your Christian teaching! Therefore he himself, as our example, not only avoided all causes of offence, but carefully practised all virtues.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
CO-OPERATION
Let us learn a lesson from the harvest. To get it we have to work for it; to get it we have to be workers with God.
I. The harvest of nature.—God gives us the seed, but He leaves us to sow it. He provides the soil, but He leaves us to till it. He sends the sunshine and rain, and leaves us to watch for the seedling and supply it with nourishment and protect it from its multitudinous enemies; and when all is done and the grain at last is ripened, we have to reap and bind it and garner and prepare it before we can eat our daily bread. Thus the application of God’s great law that He will not work for us unless we work with Him. The fowls of the air neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but our Heavenly Father feeds them; but He will not feed us unless we do all these things, just because we are so much better than they. There is only one animal that is not supported without his own labour, and that is man; but God made us as He has not made the fowls of the air. We are capable of being workers with Him, that wonderful partnership—the Divine with the human and the human with the Divine.
II. The harvest of the world.—Even in this harvest God will not work alone. If He choose, He can convert the world entirely in a day. If He choose, simply by the fiat of His almighty will He can instantly gather every human soul into His garner; yet He will not do it. If we do not take our part, the world is to remain unconverted. We must be workers together with Him. We take no part sometimes in this grand work. We take no interest in it. We seem to imagine that it is quite excusable to stand by in a world where two out of every three have never heard the Word of Christ. We seem to think it quite excusable never to say a prayer for His work. It is an utterly unchristian idea that all we have to live for is to save our own souls, no matter what becomes of the others. Christ died that the seed might be sown, and He passed that seed into our hands to sow.
III. The harvest of the soul.—There is the harvest of ourselves, our souls and bodies. What has God given us? He has given us life and time, strength, power of body and soul and spirit. He has given us influence. He has given us much that we can use for ourselves and for other people, and has given us much that we may use for Him. It can bear fruit only by His power. Without Him we can do nothing, and God could, if He would, reap a rich harvest without any effort of our own. For every talent He has entrusted to us He can get tenfold, and from every one of us He can force fruit—some thirty, some a hundredfold. He could if He would. He could, but He will not. We have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling with Him. He ‘worketh in us both to will and to do according to His good pleasure.’ How little we think of that work! What wonderful care we take of our bodies, and very often of our minds, but neglect our souls altogether! The sowing time is now, and we cannot help sowing something—something in ourselves, something in others; and there must be a harvest. Neglect it, forget it, disregard it as we may, the harvest must come, the crop must be reaped. ‘Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that also shall he reap.’
Rev. Theodore Wood.
Illustration
‘At a harvest festival we gather together to offer our praises and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His goodness in supplying us, His children, with food; and if there is one thing more than another which impresses upon us the fact that we are dependent for our very existence on His unseen power, it is the way in which our daily bread is obtained. From the sowing of the seed to the ripening and reaping of the grain there is always something unseen being done which we cannot do ourselves; always something which we cannot do. A thousand hidden influences are at work of whose characters we know nothing, but we shall have nothing to reap unless these perform their secret functions harmoniously together under the guidance of an unseen hand. The food of the world is the gift of God, the great All-Father Who provides for us, His children; and for the harvest, as year by year it comes, we have to thank Him. Yet there is this to remember, that God does not give this independently of ourselves.’