SUCCESS.
SUCCESS INTENDED.
Nothing is clearer in the Acts of the Apostles than that the disciples
after Pentecost had success in gospel service. Everywhere they went God
rained fire upon their Word and sanctioned the truth which they
preached by tremendous moral and spiritual upheavals.
B. T. ROBERTS.
Bishop Roberts has put the matter of success very succinctly: "If the
lawyer must win his case and the doctor cure his patient in order to be
successful, the minister and worker must save souls if they in their
calling are to be said to be successful." But alas, saving souls is
precisely what we are not doing. Thank God! there is here and there a
man who stands out as a soul-saver. But the average minister is not
distinguished for revivalism so much as proficiency in making a church
social a "blooming success."
FALLEN SAMSONS.
We all want to seem to succeed. We shun and dread the appearance of
failure. When a church begins to rot instead of grow it is natural for
us to do our utmost to find out some way of excusing the retrogression
without admitting our failure to reach men with the gospel. There are
evangelists, who in the palmy days of their power had wonderful,
heaven-gladdening revivals, who have ceased to wield "the sword of the
Lord and of Gideon," and, in order to cover their spiritual nakedness,
are forced to resort to finger-raising, card-signing methods for
stuffing and expanding "the big revival." There is no more sobbing, no
more desperate praying, no more shouting; all is "decent and in order,"
as well it may be, for all is dead.
QUESTION OF EVANGELISM.
Honor to soul-saving! Show us the man who wins men to our Master, that
we may clasp his hand and look into his face. Right here hangs all the
discussion about evangelism. If the evangelist gets men soundly and
scripturally converted and sanctified, let us bid him Godspeed! If he
only amuses them and deals in paltry three-cent sensationalism, away
with more of the same sort of stuff which we already have in so many
pastors!
THE DIVINE RECIPE.
One thing is certain: God intends success and only success for His
people. If, as His children, we fail, it must be because we have not
followed the divine recipe for power and accomplishment. It was because
the one hundred and twenty obeyed Christ and tarried at Jerusalem that
God used the early Church to whip the Roman Empire.
"HOW TO SUCCEED"
"How to Succeed," used as the title for a book, will make any book
sell, though it be as dry as a patent-office report. People want to
know how to succeed in the world. How strange then that ministers and
churches who are brilliant and conspicuous failures should shun the
preaching of Pentecost--the one cure for failure and the sole guarantee
of success.
EMPTY COMFORT.
How many times some of us have sighed over our inefficiency! How
frequently, in default of apparent results, we have been forced to
console ourselves with the thought that we are "sowing seed" and that
there will be an abundant harvest at no distant date! Thank God! there
is success for us all. Pentecost will give it to us.
JOHN THE BAPTIST.
We do not mean by success financial opulence. A man may be a success
and yet as poor as John the Baptist lunching on dried locusts and
honey-comb. One may be as wealthy as Croesus and yet be an awful
failure. A church may be rich and increased with goods and incur the
Laodicean curse.
PADDED STATISTICS.
Neither does success mean a great and highly-trumpeted statistical
report to lug to conference. Some of our most inspiring "successes" are
all right on paper, but in reality they are stuffed and padded
scandalously. No, success in Christian work is to "turn many to
righteousness," save souls, and secure the sanctification of believers.
If we do not see such results following our labor, we have either
missed God's plan as to our selection of a field or we are not living
in the present enjoyment of the Pentecostal Baptism.
THE EPOCHAL EXPERIENCE.
The preachers and evangelists who have won great successes in the
calling of sinners to repentance have almost without exception
testified to having received an "enduement" or "anointing" subsequent
to their conversion. The Caugheys, the Moodys, the Whitefields, the
Wesleys, the Foxes, the Earles, though in some instances they have not
believed in holiness according to the Wesleyan view, have all had an
epochal event after which their work and works were effective and
startling.
THE EFFECT OF PENTECOST.
Pentecost coming to a mission-worker will fill his heart with
enthusiasm and energy, and give him a host of jewels washed from the
mire and shining like meteors. The same experience coming to a mechanic
will fire him with a love for Jesus and a solicitude for souls that
will make him pray and fast and weep and work for his fellow-laborers,
for his neighbors, and for his friends. The Spirit coming to a gifted
singer will cause her to consecrate her voice, like Rachel Winslow in
Sheldon's "In His Steps," so that with holy melody she will reach
hearts hitherto hard and untouched.
THE PASSION FOR SOULS.
One of the conditions of success in soul-saving is a passion for the
salvation of immortal men and women. Full salvation always brings this,
and as long as a worker lives in its plentitude and enjoyment he is
consumed with a burning, longing, panting thirst for souls.
THE GIGANTIC LANDSLIDE.
The ministers of early Methodism and early Quakerism were not of the
sort who congregate in groups and discuss the relative desirability of
various appointments. They did not spend their leisure in jesting,
punning and guffawing, but in praying, studying, and working, for even
their vacations were turned into days of toil. They spent their all in
one endeavor--to save men from a yawning Pit and a lurid Hell. Nowadays
we live in perpetual relaxation and recreation. Smooth, insipid
preachers talk to shallow, giddy audiences, and the whole thing is on a
gigantic landslide. Lord, save! or death and damnation are sure.
THE UNCERTAIN FAITH.
There can be no successful denial of the assertion that real
soul-absorbing earnestness in religion is dying out. We sometimes mock
at the Herculean labors of men like Owen, and Baxter, and Calvin, and
Edwards. But though these men were perhaps more or less legalistic and
at times a little narrow, yet one thing is sure, they made religion the
business of life, and went at it with zest, enthusiasm, and
determination. Your modern "Christian" has "certain intellectual
difficulties"; is "not fixed in belief concerning Socinianism"; does
"not like the old idea of the Atonement"; in fact, is in a state of
fusion so far as his belief and faith are concerned. Men do not give
their life's blood for matters in which they have only a half-faith.
But when one is convinced that men are dying in the dark and that their
salvation depends in a measure on one's activity and fidelity, then one
is hot with zeal and fire from hat to heel and set to working for God
and eternal souls.
WEEPING OVER CHORAZIN.
This is the explanation of the zeal of men who are "burning for Jesus."
This is the reason men so frequently wear out in short order after they
are sanctified. They are dipped in fellowship with Christ's sorrow, and
beholding Him weeping over modern Capernaums and Chorazins their hearts
are melted at the sight, and they speed away to preach the gospel of
the lovely Son of God.
SANCTIFIED SUCCESS.
No wonder success comes to the sanctified man. Indwelt by the Shekinah,
filled with the Holy Ghost, his whole being energized with power and
force, "whatsoever he doeth prospers."