HOW TO WORK FOR GOD WITH SUCCESS.
Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.--MATT. xxi. 28.
Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.--LUKE xiv. 23.
I am to speak of some needful qualifications for successful labor;
and I say:--
First, that there are certain laws which govern success in the
kingdom of grace as well as in the kingdom of nature, and you must
study these laws, and adapt yourself to them. It would be in vain for
the husbandman to scatter his seed over the unbroken ground or on
pre-occupied soil. You must plough and harrow and put your seed in
carefully, and in proper proportion, and at the right time, and then
you must water and weed and wait for the harvest. And just so in
Divine things. Oh! we shall find out, by-and-by, that the laws of the
spiritual kingdom are quite as certain and unerring in their
operation as the laws of the natural kingdom, and, perhaps, a great
deal more so; but, through the blindness and obtuseness and unbelief
of our hearts, we could not, or would not find them out. People get
up and fluster about, and expect to be able to work for God without
any thought or care or trouble. For the learning of earthly
professions they will give years of labor and thought, but in work
for God they do not seem to think it worth while to take the trouble
to think and ponder, to plan and experiment, to try means, to pray
and wrestle with God for wisdom. Oh! no: they will not be at the
_trouble_. Then they fail, grow discouraged, and give up.
Now, my friends, this is not the way to begin work for God. Begin as
soon as you like--begin at once--but begin in the right way. Begin by
praying much for Him to show you how, and to equip you for the work,
and begin in a humble, submissive, teachable spirit.
Study the New Testament with special reference to this, and you will
be surprised how every page of it will give you increased light. You
will see that God holds you absolutely responsible for every iota of
capacity and influence He has given you, that He expects you to
improve every moment of your time, every faculty of your being, every
particle of your influence, and every penny of your money _for Him_.
When you once get _this_ light, it will be a marvelous guide in all the
other particulars and ramifications of your life. Study your plans. How
men in earthly warfare study plans of stratagem, and adopt all manner of
measures in order that they may take the enemy by surprise! But, alas!
how little care and attention God's people give to taking souls; and yet
it is _far harder work to take souls than it is to take cities_.
How surprised I have often been at the assumption of people who,
perhaps, never gave one hour's consecutive thought in their lives to
the best means of doing certain work, and yet they will pronounce an
opinion right off as to certain modes and measures which have been
tried and proved successful in the lives of some of the most
successful laborers for God. They will say, "Oh! I don't believe in
it." "Oh! it is all nonsense, ridiculous, wrong!" while, perhaps,
those people whom they condemn have been pleading, and weeping, and
studying, and experimenting, and almost sacrificing their heart's
blood to try to find out the best means of winning souls for Christ.
I shall never forget the shock that came over me once in a large
gathering of Christian people, when a gentleman, who occupied a
somewhat prominent position, was giving out a hymn which contained a
verse something about spending one hour in watching with Jesus. He
stopped in the middle of this hymn, and said words to this effect: "I
am afraid we are verily guilty here. I do not know that I dare say I
ever watched one consecutive hour with Jesus in my life." I shall
never forget it. My cheeks burned with shame. I said, "Oh! my God, if
these are the leaders, we need not wonder at the people." A man
occupying such a position to dare to say it! The Lord have mercy on
him. No wonder the Lord's work is done in such a bungling way! I say
those who want to be successful in winning souls require to watch not
only days but nights. They want much of the Holy Ghost, for it is
true still, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and
fasting." We have grown wiser than our Lord now-a-days; but, I tell
you, it is the same old-fashioned way, and if you want to pour out
living waters upon souls, either publicly or privately, you will have
to drink largely at the fountain yourself, and have them very ready
to let out! If you have not, your talk will be as sounding brass or
tinkling cymbal. Oh! it makes my soul weep tears of blood to think of
the misdirected effort that will be put forth this very Christian
Sabbath. Plenty of labor, but how little comes of it?--all because it
is cramped, and ruined, and misdirected, for want of thought, and
prayer, and a single eye for the salvation of souls. May God rouse us
up to this, and make us willing to think, and labor, and learn, and
wrestle, and sacrifice, in order that we may do it.
Then, further, the second qualification for successful labor is
power to get the truth _home_ to the _heart_.
Not to _deliver_ it! I wish the word had never been coined in connection
with Christian work. "Deliver" it, indeed--_that_ is not in the Bible!
No, no; not deliver it; but drive it home--send it in--make it _felt_.
That is your work;--not merely to say it--not quietly and gently to put
it before the people. Here is just the difference between a
self-consuming, soul-burdened, Holy Ghost, successful ministry, and a
careless, happy-go-lucky, easy sort of thing, that just rolls it out
like a lesson, and goes home, holding itself in no way responsible for
the consequences. Here is _all_ the difference, either in public or
individual labor. God has made you responsible, not for delivering the
truth, but for GETTING IT IN--getting it home, fixing it in the
conscience as a red-hot iron, as a bolt, straight from His throne; and
He has placed at your disposal the power to do it, and if you do not do
it, _blood_ will be on your skirts! Oh! this genteel way of putting the
truth! How God hates it! "If you please, dear friends, will you listen?
If you please, will you be converted? Will you come to Jesus? or shall
we read just this, that, and the other?"--no more like apostolic
preaching than darkness is like light.
God says, "GO AND DO IT: compel them to come in. That is your work.
I have nothing to do with the measures by which you do it providing
they are lawful."
"Use just the same diligence, earnestness, and determination that
you would if you were resolutely set on any human project, and always
be sure that I will be with you to the end of the world. Never doubt
My presence when you are set on My business. I will be with you, and
I will succeed you." Do it--the Lord help us to get the truth home!
This was the way with Paul, and this was the way with Jesus. Paul
says: "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men."
Oh! what a beautiful insight this gives us into the ministry. Why do
you persuade men, Paul? "Because I know the terror of the Lord that
is coming on, and because we thus judge that, if One died for all,
then were all dead. Therefore, I persuade men." He did not give up
when he had put it before them. He carried them on his heart, and he
says, "That by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every
one night and day with tears." He wept it in, as well as drove it in,
with his logic, and his eloquence, and with the power of the Holy
Ghost in him. Make it go in--make your words felt; don't talk to them
in that sickly, languid way that makes no impression--make them know
it. If you have not enough of the Holy Ghost for this, go to your
closet till you have, and then come and drive the Word home to their
conscience as a two-edged sword, dividing asunder soul and spirit.
The second thing indispensible to success is _simplicity_:--naturalness
in putting the truth.
You have not only to get it home, but, in order to do this, give it
them simply and naturally. If I were asked to put into one word what
I consider the greatest obstacle to the success of Divine Truth, even
when uttered by sincere and real people, I should say, _stiffness_.
It seems as if people, the moment they come to religion, assume a
different tone, a different look, and manner--short, become unnatural.
People sometimes come to me and say, "Oh! I would give the world to
be natural, but I have got into this way of talking to people. It
seems as though I cannot be natural. Can you help me?" I say, "Yes, I
can help you, by this advice--Determine, by the help of God, that you
will break the neck of this bondage. I will tell you how to begin.
Begin with your family. Break off right in the middle of conversation
on earthly matters, and begin to talk about their souls, or your own
experience, or drop down on your knees, and begin to pray." "Oh! but
it would be such a break." It should not be a break to talk to your
Father. If you are in the spirit of it there will be no break. This
will help you, more than anything else. Determine that you will
overcome this sanctimoniousness, which is the curse of a great deal
of the religion of this day. We want SANCTIFIED HUMANITY, not
sanctimoniousness. You want to talk to your friends in the same way
about religion, as you talk about earthly things. If a friend is in
difficulties, and he comes to you, you do not begin talking in a
circumlocutory manner about the general principles on which men can
secure prosperity, and the sad mistakes of those who have not secured
it; you come straight to the point, and, if you feel for him, you
take him by the button-hole, or put your hand in his, and say, "My
dear fellow, I am very sorry for you; is there any way in which I can
help you?" If you have a friend afflicted with a fatal malady, and
you see it, and he does not, you don't begin to descant on the power
of disease and the way people may secure health, but you say, "My
dear fellow, I am afraid this hacking cough is more serious than you
think, and that flush on your cheek is a bad sign. I am afraid you
are ill--let me counsel you to seek advice." That is the way people
talk about earthly things. Now, do exactly so about spiritual things.
If your friend is a spiritual bankrupt, tell him so. Tell him where
he is going, and that the reckoning day is coming, and that he will
be in God's prison-house very soon, and that, if the creditor once
gets hold of him, and shuts him up, he will never get out till he has
paid the uttermost farthing. If your friend has a spiritual disease,
tell him so, and deal just as straight and earnestly with him as you
would about his body. Tell him you are praying for him, and the very
concern that he reads in your eyes, will wake him up, and he will
begin to think it is time he was concerned about himself. Try to
attain this simple, easy, natural way of appealing to people about
their souls. I believe if all real Christians would attain this, and
act upon it, this country would be shaken from end to end!
Thirdly, you must be in _earnest--desperate_, I would like to say.
And, indeed, friends, settle this as a truth, that you will never
make any other soul realize the verities of eternal things, any
further than you realize them yourself. You will beget in the soul of
your hearer, exactly the degree of realization which the Spirit of
God gives to you, and no more; therefore, if you are in a dreamy,
cosy, half-asleep condition, you will only beget the same kind of
realization in the souls who hear you. You must be wide awake, quick,
alive, feeling deeply in sympathy with the truth you utter, or it
will produce no result.
Here is the reason why we have such a host of stillborn, sinewless,
ricketty, powerless spiritual children. They are born of half-dead
parents, a sort of sentimental religion, which does not take hold of
the soul, which has no depth of earth, no grasp, no power in it, and
the result is, a sickly crop of sentimental converts. Oh! the Lord give
us a real robust, living, hardy Christianity, full of zeal and faith,
which shall bring into the kingdom of God, lively, well-developed
children, full of life and energy, instead of these poor, sentimental
ghosts that are hopping around us. Oh! friends, we want this vivid
realization ourselves. If we have it we shall beget it in others.
Oh! get hold of God. Ask Him to baptize you with His Spirit "till
the zeal of His house eats you up." This Spirit will burn His way
through all obstacles of flesh and blood, of forms, proprieties,
and respectabilities--of death, and rottenness of all descriptions!
He will burn His way through, and produce living and telling results
in the hearts of those to whom you speak. Earnestness--such
earnestness that it comes to desperation--like that of Paul, who
counted all things but dross; yea, and who counted not his life dear
unto him. That was the secret. He counted not his life, nor anything
that constitutes life--liberty, pleasure, enjoyment, friends,
reputation, ease, &c.,--all on the altar, all was in the scale. He
counted none of those dear unto him, so that he might win the
perfection, the fulness of Christ in his own soul, and the salvation
of the souls around him.
Oh! what a LAUGHING-STOCK TO HELL is a light, frivolous, easy,
lukewarm professor. Oh! what a shame and puzzle to the angels in
Heaven, and what a supreme disgust to God. "I would thou wert cold or
hot. So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I
will spue thee out of My mouth." Oh! what will that be? Talk about
shame! Think of that! Shame! Some of you feel it going into the
streets for God. You feel it when a few people see you kneel down
here! Think of being spewed out of the mouth of God before an
assembled universe. What will that be? God helping me, I will avoid
that I will sooner hang with Jesus on the cross, between two thieves,
than I will bear that shame. "_I would thou wert cold or hot!_"
Some of you say, in your letters, that you will have this
whole-heartedness. You say that you have given up all, and that you
are consecrating yourself to a life of labor. Now, be _hot_. I know
you will burn the fingers of the Pharisees. Never mind that. I know
you will fire their consciences, like Samson's foxes did the corn.
Never mind that. _Be hot._ God likes hot saints. Be determined
that you will be hot. They will call you a fool: they did Paul. They
will call you a fanatic, and say, "This fellow is a troubler of
Israel"; but you must reply, "It is not I, but ye and your father's
house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord." Turn
the charge upon them. Hot people are never a trouble to hot people.
The hotter we are the nearer we get, and the more we love one
another. It is the cold people that are troubled by the hot ones. The
Lord help you to be HOT.
Then another indispensable condition is the surrendering of _all
our powers_.
There must be no holding back. "Cursed be he that holdeth back his
sword from blood." That curse is resting on Christendom to-day. Oh!
they will thrust the sword a little way in, but they will not go in
to the core. They dare not draw blood--the soldiers of this age--for
their lives. They dare not touch a man to the quick, because, alas!
they are looking to themselves, and thinking what people will say of
THEM, instead of what God will say of them. You must not be afraid of
blood if you are to be a true warrior of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
must not be afraid to say, if need be, "Oh! generation of vipers, who
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? "You must not be
afraid to say, if need be, "You have made my Father's house a den of
thieves," if you save some of them by doing it.
Oh! this accursed sycophancy; I was going to say, this accursed fear
to brave the censure of the world--this accursed making good evil and
evil good, as if God were altogether such an one as ourselves. Don't
you think He sees through the vile sham? Oh! my friends, if we don't
mend in this respect, He will come in judgment before long, and we
shall find out then the difference between the precious and the vile,
if we do not find out before. If you want to be a successful worker,
you must make up your minds to begin with, that you will be CRUCIFIED.
As a dear minister once said to somebody, when he was arguing with
him about being so hard in the pulpit, "I don't care." "Oh!" said the
other, "Don't you know what became of 'Don't care?'" "Yes," he said,
"He was crucified, and I am ready to be crucified alongside of him."
When you are in the right, don't care. You can but be crucified, and
it will soon be over; and then the Book says, "They that suffer with
Him will also reign with Him, and they shall be glorified together."
It would be a wonderful thing to be glorified alone, but, oh, think
of being glorified together!
A gentleman said lately, "I have been thinking a great deal about
the glory. It is a wonderful thing--that glory that is to follow.
This would be worth a man sitting on the dunghill all his life to
obtain." I looked at him, and thought, perhaps you are nearer to it
than you think, and perhaps I am, too. Ah! it _is_ a wonderful thing,
that glory that is to follow. Then let us be willing to suffer with Him
and for Him. Make up your mind to be crucified at the start, and then it
will be easy.
Further, _complete abandonment_ is a condition of successful labor.
It is so in anything. What would you think of a soldier who was
always reckoning how much it was to cost, and when he should get
back, or whether it was worth the sacrifice? You would say, "He is of
no use to the British Army. We want men who will go in to win at all
costs." Now, God wants men and women who will go in to win, who
believe in winning, who know they have the power to win, and who
count _all things_ loss in comparison to winning. Do you want
success? If you do not come to that first, you will never get it.
Fourthly--_You must give up, kick out of the way, trample underfoot, all
that hinders._
_Reputation_. Perhaps there are some ministers here. There were
some last Sunday, and there were some the Sunday before. Some of you
have written and others have talked to me. You say, "It would be such
an entire breaking from one's circle." Exactly. Some say, "You see,
the inevitable consequences of setting up this high standard would be
a constant running of the sword into some of your best hearers and
your best friends." Exactly; that is giving your sword to blood. You
would not think much of drawing the blood of an enemy--it is the
blood of your _friends_ that is the test! I know all about it; I
have been there. I was there a long while once. It was my own sore
spot. The devil said, "If you begin preaching they will call you an
impudent woman," and I felt it would be better almost to go to hell
than have that said about me. He said, "They will put you in the
newspapers, and say all manner of coarse and vulgar things about
you;" and God only knows what that was to my soul; but I battled and
struggled with it for a long while, until I said, at last, "Lord, I
don't care what they call me--I give myself to Thee to win souls."
Have I ever regretted it? Shall I ever regret it? No; He will take
care of your reputation. Give it up to Him, my brother. The Scribes
and the Pharisees never had anything good to say of Jesus coming in
the flesh. Give up your reputation--follow Him. If it must be, decide
to go after Him to Gethsemane, to Golgotha and the cross. Never
mind--follow Him. Give up your reputation.
Then, your habits. How ashamed some of you will be who have made the
mere Paris-born frivolities of society stand in the way of your
consecration to Christ; and yet people who do this say they are
Christians. I don't know; I cannot believe it. There is drinking;
they will have a glass of wine. Very well, you can have it; but you
shall not have the wine of the kingdom. Professors will dress like
the prostitute of Paris. Very well; but they shall not be the bride
of the Lamb. He will not walk in the streets with them, nor sit at
the same table. You can go to parties where it is said there are only
religious people, but where you know all manner of gossip and
Christless chit-chat is going on, which you would be awfully ashamed
the Master should hear, and from which you retire with no appetite
for prayer. You can go to all this, but I defy you to have the Holy
Ghost at the same time. I won't stop to argue it; I ONLY KNOW YOU
CANNOT DO IT. All that will have to be put aside and given up. You
say, "That is a sore point." Yes; I know that is driving the sword to
blood.
Fifthly.--You must consecrate your money to be used for God.
I once heard an old veteran saint say, and I thought it was
extravagant at the time, "I consider the use of money the surest test
of a man's character." I thought, no, surely his use of his wife and
children is a surer test than that; but I have lived to believe his
sentiment. Hence, you see how human experience justifies Divine
wisdom--"the love of money is the root of all evil". So it is, in one
form or other. God never uses anybody largely until they have given
up their money. I simply state a fact. We know it is so by experience
and the history of God's people. You must give up your money as an
end: saving it for its own sake, or the gratification of your selfish
purposes or those of your children--it must be all given to God, to
whom it belongs, being entirely used in His service. If you want to
be a successful laborer for souls, you will have to do that at the
threshhold. Give up your money to the Lord. If you think it right to
keep some of it, keep it to use it for Him as you go; and be as
strict with yourself, to your Heavenly Father, as you would be with
your secretary or clerk to yourself, and then you will be all right.
It is a narrow and difficult path. I tremble for you who have got
it, and I am glad I have not; but as you have got it, I give you the
best advice I know. It is an awful thing to have it, but the next
best thing is to consecrate it and use it to His glory; and if you do
not, it will eat into your soul as doth a canker. To your spiritual
nature it will be as a cancer is to your physical nature. They are
Paul's words, not mine.
I must say a word about _the reward_.
You think I am always driving you _to do_. Yes, because you
need it. The Lord knows I do not find you do any too much. Some of
you I am heartily ashamed of. Some of you need driving so that you
ought to thank God for the rod. Paul says, "Shall I come unto you
with the rod?" He was obliged to do it with some people. It is not an
enviable thing to have to do; but we dare not, when God sets us work
to do, shirk it; but there is a bright side--there is the reward.
"What!" you say, "does He pay you?" Yes, good wages--pressed
down--heaped together! He says, "The man who remembereth the poor (do
you think He means only their bodies?), I will remember him; I will make
his bed (what a tender allusion!) in his sickness." He will shake it
up; spread His feathers on the pillows as no earthly nurse, not even
the tenderest wife, can do. "I will make his bed in his sickness."
You will want Him then, brother! You are very independent, some of
you, now, but you will want Him then. "I will make his bed in
sickness. I will put underneath Him my everlasting arms." He will
cause you to triumph in the swellings of Jordan. That will be grand,
will it not? He will give you a triumphant entrance into His kingdom,
those of you who have gone out in loving solicitude and anxious
sympathy to labor for the souls of your fellow-men. He will
administer unto you an abundant entrance, and then--what? He will
give you CHILDREN; and the barren woman shall have more children than
she that hath a husband.
Oh! the whole world is akin here. Every man and woman wants
children. They are especially a heritage from the Lord. Nothing can
make up for the want of children. The poorest parents, living in the
humblest hut, would not sell you their children, and the rich man,
who has twenty thousand a year, would give it for a son or for a
daughter, when he cannot have one. All human beings want children.
Now, then, the Lord will give you children. A mother--even a
sanctified mother--I suppose, cannot help feeling proud, or, rather,
glad and thankful, when she shows good, obedient, and godly children
to her friends. I do not believe that God wants to grind this out of
us. I believe He delights in it Himself, just as He delighted to show
His servant Job to the devil. "Hast thou considered My servant Job?"
Ah! was He not proud of him?--and He has been proud of him ever
since. God has put this feeling in us, and it is a right feeling when
it is sanctified. We cannot help but be proud of godly and obedient
children; but what will it be to show your spiritual children, to the
angels? How shall you feel when you gather the spiritual family which
God has given you round the throne of your Saviour, and say, "Here am
I and the children whom Thou hast given me"?--the children won
through conflict, and trial, and strife, such as only God knew;
"Children begotten in bonds," as Paul says--chains--children born in
the midst of the hurricane of spiritual conflict, travail, and
suffering, and cradled, rocked, fed, nurtured, and brought up at
infinite cost and rack of brain, and heart, and soul; but now, here
we are, Lord. We are here through it all. "Here am I and the children
whom Thou hast given me." How shall you feel? Shall you be sorry for
the trouble? Shall you regret the sacrifice? Shall you murmur at the
way He has led you? Shall you think He might have made it a little
easier, as you are sometimes tempted to do now? Oh! no, no!--THE
CHILDREN! THE CHILDREN! you shall have children! Won't that be reward
enough?
Oh! sometimes, when I am passing through conflict, and trial, in
connection with a work which brings plenty of it behind the scenes, I
encourage myself in the Lord, and remember those who have gone home
sending me their salutations, from the verge of the river, telling me
they will wait and look out for me, and be the first to hand me to
the Saviour when I get there. Will not this be reward enough? Even
so, Lord. Amen.