Teamwork
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not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things
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that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” This
is the confidence that the Lord would have you cherish in each other.
Unless you do this more than you have done in your past experience,
you will not walk and work under the dictates of the Spirit of God.
God would have you united in pleasant cords of companionship. As
the Lord’s workmen, you are to open your plans one to another. These
plans must be carefully and prayerfully considered; for the Lord will
leave those who do not do this to stumble in their own supposed
wisdom and superior greatness....
One person must not suppose that his wisdom is beyond making
any mistake. God would have the greatest cherish that humility that
will lead him to be the servant of all, if duty thus orders it.
But while you are to love as brethren, and think soul to soul, heart
to heart, life to life, you are individually to lean your whole weight on
God. He will be your support. He is not pleased when you depend on
each other for light and wisdom and direction. The Lord must be our
wisdom. Individually we must know that He is our sanctification and
our redemption. To Him we may look; in Him we may trust. He will
be to us a present help in every time of need.
Whatever our duties in the various lines of work may be, remember
that God is the General over all. You must not withdraw from Him to
make flesh your arm. You have been too much inclined to measure
yourselves among yourselves and compare yourselves one with an-
other, estimating the importance of your work. Will you remember
that your comparisons may fall wide of the mark? It is not position
or rank by which the Lord estimates. He looks to see how much of
the Spirit of the Master you cherish and how much of the likeness of
Christ your work reveals.—
Letter 49, 1897
(September 1897, To Brn.
Daniells, Colcord, Faulkhead, Palmer, Salisbury).
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No One Man to Control—In counseling for the advancement of
the work, no one man is to be a controlling power, a voice for the
whole. Proposed methods and plans are to be carefully considered,
so that all the brethren may weigh their relative merits and decide
which should be followed. In studying the fields to which duty seems
to call us, it is well to take into account the difficulties that will be
encountered in these fields.—
Testimonies for the Church 7:259
.