"Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon
you."
"THE Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord hath
anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent
Me" (Isaiah lxi. 1), is the testimony of the workman God sends.
God chooses His own workmen, and it is the office of the Holy
Spirit to call whom He will to preach the Gospel. I doubt not He
calls men to other employments for His glory, and would still
more often do so, if men would but listen and wait upon Him to
know His will.
He called Bezaleel and Aholiab to build the tabernacle. He called
and commissioned the Gentile king, Cyrus, to rebuild Jerusalem
and restore His chastised and humbled people to their own land.
And did He not call Joan of Arc to her strange and wonderful
mission? And Washington and Lincoln?
And, no doubt, He _leads_ most men by His providence to
their life-work; but the call to preach the Gospel is more than a
providential leading; it is a distinct and imperative conviction.
Bishop Simpson, in his "Lectures on Preaching," says:--
"Even in its faintest form there is this distinction between a
call to the ministry and a choice of other professions: a young
man may _wish_ to be a physician; he may _desire_ to enter the
navy; he would _like_ to be a farmer; but he feels he _ought_ to
be a minister. It is this feeling of _ought_, or obligation,
which in its feeblest form indicates the Divine call. It is not
in the aptitude, taste, or desire, but in the conscience, that
its root is found. It is the voice of God to the human conscience,
saying, 'You ought to preach.'"
Sometimes the call comes as distinctly as though a voice had
spoken from the skies into the depths of the heart.
A young man who was studying law was converted. After a while he
was convicted for sanctification, and while seeking he heard, as
it were, a voice, saying, "Will you devote all your time to the
Lord?" He replied: "I am to be a lawyer, not a preacher, Lord."
But not until he had said, "Yes, Lord," could he find the
blessing.
A thoughtless, godless young fellow was working in the corn-field
when a telegram was handed him announcing the death of his
brother, a brilliant and devoted Salvation Army Field Officer;
and there and then, unsaved as he was, God called him, showed him
a vast Army with ranks broken, where his brother had fallen, and
made him to feel that he should fill the breach in the ranks.
Fourteen months later he took up the sword, and entered the Fight
from the same platform from which his brother fell, and is to-day
one of our most successful and promising Field Officers.
Again, the call may come as a quiet suggestion, a gentle
conviction, as though a gossamer bridle were placed upon the
heart and conscience to guide the man into the work of the Lord.
The suggestion gradually becomes clearer, the conviction
strengthens until it masters the man, and if he seeks to escape
it, he finds the silken bridle to be one of stoutest thongs and
firmest steel.
It was so with me. When but a boy of eleven, I heard a man
preaching, and I said to myself, "Oh, how beautiful to preach!"
Two years later I was converted, and soon the conviction came
upon me that I should preach. Later, I decided to follow another
profession; but the conviction increased in strength, while I
struggled against it, and turned away my ears and went on with my
studies. Yet in every crisis, or hour of stillness, when my soul
faced God, the conviction that I must preach burned itself deeper
into my conscience. I rebelled against it. I felt I would almost
rather (but not quite) go to Hell than to submit. Then at last a
great "Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel," took possession of
me, and I yielded, and God won. Hallelujah!
The first year He gave me three revivals, with many souls; and
now I would rather preach Jesus to poor sinners and feed His
lambs than to be an archangel before the Throne. Some day, some
day, He will call me into His blessed presence, and I shall stand
before His face, and praise Him for ever for counting me worthy,
and calling me to preach His glad Gospel, and share in His joy of
saving the lost. The "woe" is lost in love and delight through
the baptism of the Spirit and the sweet assurance that Jesus is
pleased.
Occasionally, the call comes to a man who is ready and responds
promptly and gladly. When Isaiah received the fiery touch that
purged his life and purified his heart, he "heard the voice of
the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"
And in the joy and power of his new experience, he cried out,
"Here am I; send me!" (Isaiah vi. 5-8).
When Paul received his call, he says, "Immediately I conferred
not with flesh and blood" (Gal. i. 16), and he got up and went as
the Lord led him.
But more often it seems the Lord finds men preoccupied with other
plans and ambitions, or encompassed with obstacles and difficulties,
or oppressed with a deep sense of unworthiness or unfitness. Moses
argued that he could not talk. "O Lord!" he said, "I am not
eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy
servant; but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue."
And then the Lord condescended, as He always does, to reason with
the backward man. "Who hath made man's mouth?" He asks, "or who
maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I
the Lord? Now, therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth, and
teach thee what thou shalt say" (Exodus iv. 10-12).
When the call of God came to Jeremiah, he shrank back, and said,
"Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child." But the
Lord replied, "Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all
that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt
speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to
deliver thee" (Jeremiah i. 6-8).
And so the call of God comes to-day to those who shrink and feel
that they are the most unfit, or most hedged in by insuperable
difficulties.
I know a man, who, when converted, could not tell A from B. He
knew nothing whatever about the Bible, and stammered so badly
that, when asked his own name, it would usually take him a minute
or so to tell it; added to this, he lisped badly, and was subject
to a nervous affliction which seemed likely to unfit him for any
kind of work whatever. But God poured light and love into his
heart, called him to preach, and to-day he is one of the
mightiest soul-winners in the whole round of my acquaintance.
When he speaks the house is always packed to the doors, and the
people hang on his words with wonder and joy.
He was converted at a Camp meeting, and sanctified wholly in a
cornfield. He learned to read; but, being too poor to afford a
light in the evening, he studied a large-print Bible by the light
of the full moon. To-day, he has the Bible almost committed to
memory, and when he speaks he does not open the Book, but reads
his lesson from memory, and quotes proof texts from Genesis to
Revelation without mistake, and gives chapter and verse for every
quotation. When he talks his face shines, and his speech is like
honey for sweetness, and like bullets fired from a gun for power.
He is one of the weak and foolish ones God has chosen to confound
the wise and mighty (1 Cor. i. 27).
If God calls a man, He will so corroborate the call in some way,
that men may know that there is a prophet among them. It will be
with him as it was with Samuel. "And Samuel grew, and the Lord
was with him, and did let none of His words fall to the ground.
And all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was
established to be a prophet of the Lord" (1 Samuel iii. 19, 20).
If the man himself is uncertain about the call, God will deal
patiently with him, as He did with Gideon, to make him certain.
His fleece will be wet with dew when the earth is dry, or dry
when the earth is wet; or he will hear of some tumbling barley
cake smiting the tents of Midian, that will strengthen his faith,
and make him to know that God is with him (Judges vi. 36-40;
vii. 9-15).
If the door is shut and difficulties hedge the way, God will go
before the man He calls, and open the door and sweep away the
difficulties (Isaiah xlv. 2, 3).
If others think the man so ignorant and unfit that they doubt his
call, God will give him such grace or such power to win souls
that they shall have to acknowledge that God has chosen him. It
was in this way that God made a whole National Headquarters, from
the Commissioner downwards, to know that He had chosen the
elevator boy for His work. The boy got scores of his passengers
on the elevator saved, and then he was commissioned and sent into
the Field to devote all his time to saving men.
The Lord will surely let the man's comrades and brethren know, as
surely as He did the Church at Antioch, when "the Holy Ghost
said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have
called them" (Acts xiii. 2).
Sometimes the one who is called will try to hide it in his heart,
and then God stirs up some Officer or minister, some Soldier or
mother in Israel, to lay a hand on his shoulders, and ask, "Are
you not called to the work?" and he finds he cannot hide himself
nor escape from the call, any more than could Adam hide himself
from God behind the trees of the garden, or Jonah escape God's
call by taking ship for Tarshish.
Happy is the man who does not try to escape, but, though
trembling at the mighty responsibility, assumes it, and, with all
humility and faithfulness, sets to work by prayer and patient,
continuous study of God's word, to fit himself for God's work. He
will need to prepare himself, for the call to the work is also a
call to preparation, continuous preparation of the fullest
possible kind.
The man whom God calls cannot safely neglect or despise the call.
He will find his mission on earth, his happiness and peace, his
power and prosperity, his reward in Heaven, and probably Heaven
itself, bound up with that call and dependent upon it. He may run
away from it, as did Jonah, and find a waiting ship to favour his
flight; but he will also find fierce storms and bellowing seas
overtaking him, and big-mouthed fishes of trouble and disaster
ready to swallow him.
But if he heeds the call, and cheerfully goes where God appoints,
God will go with him; he shall nevermore be left alone. The Holy
Spirit will surely accompany him, and he may be one of the
happiest men on earth, one of the gladdest creatures in God's
universe.
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," said
Jesus, as He commissioned His disciples to go to all nations and
preach the Gospel. "My presence shall go with thee," said Jehovah
to Moses, when sending him to face Pharaoh and free Israel, and
lead them to the Promised Land.
And to the boy Jeremiah, He said, "Be not afraid of their faces:
for I am with thee to deliver thee.... And they shall fight
against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am
with thee" (Jeremiah i. 8, 19).
I used to read these words with a great and rapturous joy, as I
realised by faith that they were also meant for me, and for every
man sent of God, and that His blessed presence was with me every
time I spoke to the people or dealt with an individual soul, or
knelt in prayer with a penitent seeker after God; and I still
read them so.
Has He called you into the work, my brother? And are you
conscious of His helpful, sympathising, loving presence with you?
If so, let no petty offence, no hardship, nor danger, nor dread
of the future, cause you to turn aside or draw back. Stick to the
work till He calls you out, and when He so calls you can go with
open face and a heart abounding with love, joy, and peace, and He
will still go with you.
"HAVE YE RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST SINCE YE BELIEVED?"