'I also labour, striving according to His working,
which worketh in me mightily.'--COL. i. 29.
I have chosen this text principally because it brings together the two
subjects which are naturally before us to-day. All 'Western
Christendom,' as it is called, is to-day commemorating the Pentecostal
gift. My text speaks about that power that 'worketh in us mightily.'
True, the Apostle is speaking in reference to the fiery energy and
persistent toil which characterised him in proclaiming Christ, that he
might present men perfect before Him. But the same energy which he
expended on his apostolic office he expended on his individual
personality. And he would not have discharged the one unless he had
first laboured on the other. And although in a letter contemporary with
this one from which my text is taken he speaks of himself as no longer
young, but 'such an one as Paul the aged, and likewise, also a prisoner
of Jesus Christ,' the young spirit was in him, and the continual
pressing forward to unattained heights. And that is the spirit, not only
of a section of the Church divided from the rest by youth and by special
effort, but of the whole Church if it is worth calling a Church, and
unless it is thus instinct, it is a mere dead organisation.
So I hope that what few things I have to say may apply to, and be felt
to be suitable by all of us, whether we are nominally Christian
Endeavourers or not. If we are Christian people, we are such. If we are
not endeavouring, shall I venture to say we are not Christians? At any
rate, we are very poor ones.
Now here, then, are two plain things, a great universal Christian duty
and a sufficient universal Christian endowment. 'I work striving'; that
is the description of every true Christian. 'I work striving, according
to His working, who worketh in me mightily': there is the great gift
which makes the work and the striving possible. Let me briefly deal,
then, with these two.