_Your reasonable service_. It is a reasonable service,
First: Because God uses human instrumentality and he needs you, and it
is therefore a reasonable demand to make, for we should place ourselves
absolutely at his disposal.
In the guest book of a friend I saw recently a few lines written by Dr.
John Willis Baer in which he said, quoting from another:
"God gave himself for us.
"God gave himself to us.
"God wants to give himself through us."
But if our lives are inconsistent and our hearts are unclean he cannot
do it. If we have not yielded ourselves altogether God himself is
limited.
Second: It is a reasonable request to make because of what God has done
for us.
One of the distinguished ministers of the Presbyterian Church told us
the other day in a conference in a western city that a little boy who
had been operated upon by Dr. Lorenz said as soon as he came out from
under the anesthetic, "It will be a long time before my mother hears
the last of this doctor"; and then, said my friend, "I thought of an
incident in my own life of a poor German boy whose feet were twisted
out of shape, whose mother was poor and could not have him operated
upon, and I determined to bring him to a great doctor and ask him to
take him in charge. The operation was over and was a great success.
When the plaster cast had been taken off from his feet my friend said
he went to take him home. He called his attention to the hospital and
the boy admired it, but he said, 'I like the doctor best.' He spoke of
the nurses and the boy was slightly interested, but said, 'They are
nothing compared to the doctor.' He called his attention to the
perfect equipment of the hospital and he was unmoved except as again
and again he referred to the doctor. They reached the Missouri town
and stepped out of the station together, and the old German mother was
waiting to receive him. She did not look at her boy's face nor at his
hands but she fell on her knees and looked at his feet and then said
sobbing, 'It is just like any other boy's foot.' Taken into her arms,
the minister said all the boy kept saying to her over and over was,
'Mother, you ought to know the doctor that made me walk.'"
Then my friend said, "There is not one of us for whom Jesus Christ has
not done ten thousand times more for us than the doctor did for this
boy, and we have never spoken for him, we have not yielded ourselves to
him." It must have been with some such spirit as this that the Apostle
said, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable
service" (Romans 12:1).