I. We must take care we do not hinder. We may hinder by indifference. People who hinder are often people who live at ease. Take care you do not hinder any good work, do not dishearten any workers; if you do not agree with their methods, do your best not to injure their work.
II. Nerve yourself to triumph over hindrances. Your life and mine ought to mean conquest. We want victory everywhere, Christ glorified in all our life. The service of Christ never wearies. There is no service in the world you would not be tired with, if you had to live and work for humanity alone.
III. Let us approach the subject along the line of variety of work. There is a great deal to be said for the numerous ways in which we may help. Some people in the world have a faculty for helping, though not dowered with rich gifts. Where the spirit of helping together is, it is not only the result that is attained, but in this moulding process we lose our angularities and divisions.
IV. This helping together will be rewarded in ways we little think of. First try to realise the world's great misery of selfishness by listening to its sob and sigh and broken song. As Christians we are happy in helping. We are all disciplined by it. There is a reflex influence in all we do upon ourselves. Idleness is the parent of all sins that is, the cradle in which they are born; and one good result of helping others is this, that to help others I must have strength myself. It drives me to Christ for grace of forbearance and strength to overcome obstacles in my way. Happy if, when evening comes, we can feel that we have been thrown together for great and loyal purposes for Christ's work.
W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 365.
Reference: 2 Corinthians 1:11; 2 Corinthians 1:12. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 507.