96
Gospel Workers 1915
My brethren, the Lord is coming, and we need to bend every energy
to the accomplishment of the work before us. I appeal to you to give
yourselves wholly to the work. Christ gave His time, His soul, His
strength, to labor for the benefit and blessing of humanity. Entire days
were devoted to labor, and entire nights were spent in prayer, that
He might be braced to meet the foe and fortified to help those who
came to Him for relief. As we trace a stream of living water by the
line of green that it produces, so Christ may be seen in the deeds of
mercy that marked His path at every step. Wherever He went, health
sprang up, and happiness followed where He passed. So simply did
He present the words of life that a child could understand them. The
youth caught His spirit of ministry, and sought to pattern after His
gracious ways by assisting those who needed help. The blind and deaf
rejoiced in His presence. His words to the ignorant and sinful opened
to them a fountain of life. He dispensed His blessings abundantly and
continuously; they were the garnered riches of eternity, given in Christ,
the Father’s gift to man.
[116]
Workers for God should as surely feel that they are not their own
as if the very stamp and seal of identification were placed upon their
persons. They are to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ’s sacrifice,
and in the spirit of entire consecration they should resolve that by
the grace of Christ they will be a living sacrifice. But how few of us
regard the salvation of sinners in the light in which it is viewed by
the heavenly universe,—as a plan devised from eternity in the mind
of God! How few of us are heart to heart with the Redeemer in this
solemn, closing work! There is scarcely a tithe of the compassion that
there should be for souls unsaved. There are so many to be warned,
and yet how few sympathize with God sufficiently to be anything or
nothing if only they can see souls won to Christ!
When Elijah was about to leave Elisha, he said to him, “Ask what
I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said,
I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.” [
2 Kings
2:9
.] Elisha did not ask for worldly honor, for a place among the great
men of the earth. That which he craved was a large portion of the
spirit given to the one whom God was about to honor with translation.
He knew that nothing else could fit him for the work that would be
required of him.