There is, perhaps, no part of Christian experience where a greater change is
known upon entering into the life hid with Christ in God, than in the matter of
service.
In all the lower forms of Christian life, service is apt to have more or less
of bondage in it; that is, it is one purely as a matter of duty, and often as a
trial and a cross. Certain things, which at the first may have been a joy and
delight, become weary tasks, performed faithfully, perhaps, but with much
secret disinclination, and many confessed or unconfessed wishes that they need
not be done at all, or at least that they need not be done so often. The soul
finds itself saying, instead of the "May I" of love, the "Must I" of duty. The
yoke, which was at first easy, begins to gall, and the burden feels heavy
instead of light.
One dear Christian expressed it once to me in
this way. "When I was first converted," she said, "I was so full of joy and
love that I was only too glad and thankful to be allowed to do anything for my
Lord, and I eagerly entered every open door. But after a while, as my early joy
faded away, and my love burned less fervently, I began to wish I had not been
quite so eager; for I found myself involved in lines of service which were
gradually becoming very distasteful and burdensome to me. I could not very well
give them up, since I had begun them, without exciting great remark, and yet I
longed to do so increasingly. I was expected to visit the sick, and pray beside
their beds. I was expected to attend prayer-meetings, and speak at them. I was
expected to be always ready for every effort in Christian work, and the sense
of these expectations bowed me down continually. At last it became so
unspeakably burdensome to me to live the sort of Christian life I had entered
upon, and was expected by all around me to live, that I felt as if any kind of
manual labor would have been easier, and I would have preferred, infinitely,
scrubbing all day on my hands and knees, to being compelled to go through the
treadmill of my daily Christian work. I envied," she said, "the servants in the
kitchen, and the women at the wash-tubs."
This may seem to some like a strong statement:
but does it not present a vivid picture of some of your own experiences, dear
Christian? Have you never gone to your work as a slave to his daily task,
knowing it to be your duty, and that therefore you must do it, but rebounding
like an india-rubber ball back into your real interests and pleasures the
moment your work was over?
Of course you have known this was the wrong way
to feel, and have been ashamed of it from the bottom of your heart, but still
you have seen no way to help it. You have not loved your work, and, could you
have done so with an easy conscience, you would have been glad to have given it
up altogether.
Or, if this does not describe your case, perhaps
another picture will. You do love your work in the abstract; but, in the doing
of it, you find so many cares and responsibilities connected with it, so many
misgivings and doubts as to your own capacity or fitness, that it becomes a
very heavy burden, and you go to it bowed down and weary, before the labor has
even begun. Then also you are continually distressing yourself about the
results of your work, and greatly troubled if they are not just what you would
like, and this of itself is a constant burden.
Now from all these forms of bondage the soul is
entirely delivered that enters fully into the blessed life of faith. In the
first place, service of any sort becomes delightful to it, because, having
surrendered its will into the keeping of the Lord, He works in it to will and
to do of His good pleasure, and the soul finds itself really wanting to do the
things God wants it to do. It is always very pleasant to do the things we want
to do, let them be ever so difficult of accomplishment, or involve ever so much
of bodily weariness. If a man's will is really set on a thing, he regards with
a sublime indifference the obstacles that lie in the way of his reaching it,
and laughs to himself at the idea of any opposition or difficulties hindering
him. How many men have gone gladly and thankfully to the ends of the world in
search of worldly fortunes, or to fulfil worldly ambitions, and have scorned
the thoughts of any cross connected with it! How many mothers have
congratulated themselves and rejoiced over the honor done their sons in being
promoted to some place of power and usefulness in their country's service,
although it has involved perhaps years of separation, and a life of hardship
for their dear ones? And yet these same men and these very mothers would have
felt and said that they were taking up crosses too heavy almost to be borne,
had the service of Christ required the same sacrifice of home, and friends, and
worldly ease. It is altogether the way we look at things, whether we think they
are crosses or not. And I am ashamed to think that any Christian should ever
put on a long face and shed tears over doing a thing for Christ, which a
worldly man would be only too glad to do for money.
What we need in the Christian life is to get
believers to want to do God's will, as much as other people want to do their
own will. And this is the idea of the Gospel. It is what God intended for us;
and it is what He has promised. In describing the new covenant in Heb. 8:6-13,
He says it shall no more be the old covenant made on Sinai, that is, a law
given from the outside, controlling a man by force, but it shall be a law
written within constraining a man by love. "I will put my laws," He says, "in
their mind, and write them in their hearts." This can mean nothing but that we
shall love His law, for anything written on our hearts we must love. And
putting it into our minds is surely the same as God working in us to "will and
to do of His good pleasure," and means that we shall will what God wills, and
shall obey His sweet commands, not because it is our duty to do so, but because
we ourselves want to do what He wants us to do. Nothing could possibly be
conceived more effectual than this. How often have we thought when dealing with
our children, "Oh, if I could only get inside of them and make them want to do
just what I want, how easy it would be to manage them then!" And how often
practically in experience we have found that, to deal with cross-grained
people, we must carefully avoid suggesting our wishes to them, but must in some
way induce them to suggest them themselves, sure that then there will be no
opposition to contend with. And we, who are by nature a stiff-necked people,
always rebel more or less against a law from outside of us, while we joyfully
embrace the same law springing up within.
God's plan for us therefore is to get possession
of the inside of a man, to take the control and management of his will, and to
work it for him; and then obedience is easy and a delight, and service becomes
perfect freedom, until the Christian is forced to exclaim, "This happy service!
Who could dream earth had such liberty?"
What you need to do then, dear Christian, if you
are in bondage, is to put your will over completely into the hands of your
Lord, surrendering to Him the entire control of it. Say, "Yes, Lord, YES!" to
everything; and trust Him so to work in you to will, as to bring your whole
wishes and affections into conformity with His own sweet and lovable and most
lovely will. I have seen this done over and over, in cases where it looked
beforehand an utterly impossible thing. In one case, where a lady had been for
years rebelling fearfully against a thing which she knew was right, but which
she hated, I saw her, out of the depths of despair and without any feeling,
give her will in that matter up into the hands of her Lord, and begin to say to
Him, "Thy will be done; thy will be done!" And in one short hour that very
thing began to look sweet and precious to her. It is wonderful what miracles
God works in wills that are utterly surrendered to Him. He turns hard things
into easy, and bitter things into sweet. It is not that He puts easy things in
the place of the hard, but He actually changes the hard thing into an easy one.
And this is salvation. It is grand. Do try it, you who are going about your
daily Christian living as to a hard and weary task, and see if your divine
Master will not transform the very life you live now as a bondage, into the
most delicious liberty!
Or again, if you do love His will in the
abstract, but find the doing of it hard and burdensome, from this also there is
deliverance in the wonderful life of faith. For in this life no burdens are
carried, nor anxieties felt. The Lord is our burden-bearer, and upon Him we
must lay off every care. He says, in effect, Be careful for nothing, but just
make your requests known to Me, and I will attend to them all. Be careful for
nothing, He says, not even your service. Above all, I should think, our
service, because we know ourselves to be so utterly helpless in this, that even
if we were careful, it would not amount to anything. What have we to do with
thinking whether we are fit or not! The Master-workman surely has a right to
use any tool He pleases for His own work, and it is plainly not the business of
the tool to decide whether it is the right one to be used or not. He knows; and
if He chooses to use us, of course we must be fit. And in truth, if we only
knew it, our chiefest fitness is in our utter helplessness. His strength can
only be made perfect in our weakness. I can give you a convincing illustration
of this.
I was once visiting an idiot asylum and looking
at the children going through dumb-bell exercises. Now we all know that it is a
very difficult thing for idiots to manage their movements. They have strength
enough, generally, but no skill to use this strength, and as a consequence
cannot do much. And in these dumb-bell exercises this deficiency was very
apparent. They made all sorts of awkward movements. Now and then, by a happy
chance, they would make a movement in harmony with the music and the teacher's
directions, but for the most part all was out of harmony. One little girl,
however, I noticed, who made perfect movements. Not a jar nor a break disturbed
the harmony of her exercises. And the reason was, not that she had more
strength than the others, but that she had no strength at all. She could not so
much as close her hands over the dumb-bells, nor lift her arms, and the master
had to stand behind her and do it all. She yielded up her members as
instruments to him, and his strength was made perfect in her weakness. He knew
how to go through those exercises, for he himself had planned them, and
therefore when he did it, it was done right. She did nothing but yield herself
up utterly into his hands, and he did it all. The yielding was her part, the
responsibility was all his. It was not her skill that was needed to make
harmonious movements, but only his. The question was not of her capacity, but
of his. Her utter weakness was her greatest strength. And if this is a picture
of our Christian life, it is no wonder that Paul could say, "Most gladly
therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me." Who would not glory in being so utterly weak and helpless, that
the Lord Jesus Christ should find no hindrance to the perfect working of His
mighty power through us and in us?
Then, too, if the work is His, the responsibility
is His, and we have no room left for worrying about it. Everything in reference
to it is known to Him, and He can manage it all. Why not leave it all with Him
then, and consent to be treated like a child and guided where to go. It is a
fact that the most effectual workers I know are those who do not feel the least
care or anxiety about their work, but who commit it all to their dear Master,
and, asking Him to guide them moment by moment in reference to it, trust Him
implicitly for each moment's needed supplies of wisdom and of strength. To see
such, you would almost think perhaps that they were too free from care, where
such mighty interests are at stake. But when you have learned God's secret of
trusting, and see the beauty and the power of that life which is yielded up to
His working, you will cease to condemn, and will begin to wonder how any of
God's workers can dare to carry burdens, or assume responsibilities which He
alone is able to bear.
There are one or two other bonds of service from
which this life of trust delivers us. We find out that we are not responsible
for all the work in the world. The commands cease to be general, and become
personal and individual. The Master does not map out a general course of action
for us and leave us to get along through it by our own wisdom and skill as best
we may, but He leads us step by step, giving us each hour the special guidance
needed for that hour. His blessed Spirit dwelling in us, brings to our
remembrance at the time the necessary command; so that we do not need to take
any thought ahead but simply to take each step as it is made known to us,
following our Lord whithersoever He leads us. "The steps of a good man are
ordered of the Lord" not his way only, but each separate step in that way. Many
Christians make the mistake of expecting to receive God's commands all in a
lump, as it were. They think because He tells them to give a tract to one
person in a railway train, for instance, that He means them always to give
tracts to everybody, and they burden themselves with an impossible command.
There was a young Christian once, who, because
the Lord had sent her to speak a message to one soul whom she met in a walk,
took it as a general command for always, and thought she must speak to every
one she met about their souls. This was, of course, impossible, and as a
consequence she was soon in hopeless bondage about it. She became absolutely
afraid to go outside of her own door, and lived in perpetual condemnation. At
last she disclosed her distress to a friend who was instructed in the ways of
God with His servants, and this friend told her she was making a great mistake;
that the Lord had His own especial work for each especial workman, and that the
servants in a well-regulated household might as well each one take it upon
himself to try and do the work of all the rest, as for the Lord's servants to
think they were each one under obligation to do everything. He told her just to
put herself under the Lord's personal guidance as to her work, and trust Him to
point out to her each particular person to whom He would have her speak,
assuring her that He never puts forth His own sheep without going before them,
and making a way for them Himself. She followed this advice, and laid the
burden of her work on the Lord, and the result was a happy pathway of daily
guidance, in which she was led into much blessed work for her Master, but was
able to do it all without a care or a burden, because He led her out and
prepared the way before her.
Putting ourselves into God's hands in this way,
seems to me just like making the junction between the machinery and the steam
engine. The power is not in the machinery, but in the steam; disconnected from
the engine, the machinery is perfectly useless; but let the connection be made,
and the machinery goes easily and without effort, because of the mighty power
there is behind it. Thus the Christian life becomes an easy, natural life when
it is the development of the divine working within. Most Christians live on a
strain, because their wills are not fully in harmony with the will of God, the
connection is not perfectly made at every point, and it requires an effort to
move the machinery. But when once the connection is fully made, and the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus can work in us with all its mighty power, we
are then indeed made free from the law of sin and death, and shall know the
glorious liberty of the children of God. We shall lead frictionless lives.
Another form of bondage as to service, from which
the life of faith delivers the soul, is in reference to the after-reflections
which always follow any Christian work. These self-reflections are of two
sorts. Either the soul congratulates itself upon its success, and is lifted up;
or it is distressed over its failure, and is utterly cast down. One of these is
sure to come, and of the two I think the first is the more to be dreaded,
although the last causes at the time the greater suffering. But in the life of
trust, neither will trouble us; for, having committed ourselves and our work to
the Lord, we will be satisfied to leave it to Him, and will not think about
ourselves in the matter at all.
Years ago I came across this sentence in an old
book: "Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self-reflective acts of
any kind, whether of self-congratulation or of self-despair. Forget the things
that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God." It has been
of unspeakable value to me. When the temptation comes, as it always does, to
indulge in these reflections, either of one sort or the other, I turn from them
at once, and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with
the Lord to overrule the mistakes, and to, bless it as He chooses.
To sum it all up then, what is needed for happy
and effectual service is simply to put your work into the Lord's hands, and
leave it there. Do not take it to Him in prayer, saying, "Lord, guide me; Lord,
give me wisdom; Lord, arrange for me," and then arise from your knees, and take
the burden all back, and try to guide and arrange for yourself. Leave it with
the Lord, and remember that what you trust to Him, you must not worry over nor
feel anxious about. Trust and worry cannot go together. If your work is a
burden, it is because you are not trusting it to Him. But if you do trust it to
Him, you will surely find that the yoke He puts upon you is easy, and the
burden He gives you to carry is light, and even in the midst of a life of
ceaseless activity you shall find rest to your soul.
But some may say that this teaching would make us
into mere puppets. I answer, No, it would simply make us into servants. It is
required of a servant, not that he shall plan, or arrange, or decide, or supply
the necessary material, but simply and only that he shall obey. It is for the
Master to do all the rest. The servant is not responsible, either, for results.
The Master alone knows what results he wished to have produced, and therefore
he alone can judge of them. Intelligent service will, of course, include some
degree of intelligent sympathy with the thoughts and plans of the Master, but
after all there cannot be a full comprehension, and the responsibility cannot
be transferred from the Master's shoulders to the servant's. And in our case,
where our outlook is so limited and our ignorance so great, we can do very
little more than be in harmony with the will of our Divine Master, without
expecting to comprehend it very fully, and we must leave all the results with
Him. What looks to us like failure on the seen side, is often, on the unseen
side, the most glorious success; and if we allow ourselves to lament and worry,
we shall often be doing the foolish and useless thing of weeping where we ought
to be singing and rejoicing.
Far better is it to refuse utterly to indulge in
any self-reflective acts at all; to refuse, in fact, to think about self in any
way, whether for good or evil. We are not our own property, nor our own
business. We belong to God, and are His instruments and His business; and since
He always attends to His own business, He will of course attend to us.
I heard once of a slave who was on board a vessel
in a violent storm, and who was whistling contentedly while every one else was
in an agony of terror. At last someone asked him if he was not afraid he would
be drowned. He replied with a broad grin, "Well, missus, s'pose I is. I don't
b'long to myself, and it will only be massa's loss any how."
Something of this spirit would deliver us from
many of our perplexities and sufferings in service. And with a band of servants
thus abandoned to our Master's use and to His care, what might He not
accomplish? Truly one such would "chase a thousand, and two would put ten
thousand to flight"; and nothing would be impossible to them. For it is nothing
with the Lord "to help, whether with many or with them that have no power."
May God raise up such an army speedily!
And may you, my dear reader enroll your name in
this army today and, yielding yourself unto God as one who is alive from the
dead, may every one of your members be also yielded unto Him as instruments of
righteousness, to be used by Him as He pleases.