Counsel to a Missionary in Africa
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one who has had an experience in their life in Christ show an earnest
faith in God as the true worker. Show that you realize that you are only
a channel through which God works. Appreciate the fact that God is
our efficiency. We do not remember this, and therefore we lose much
in religious experience. We work ourselves in place of being worked
by the Holy Spirit’s power. We forget to regard ourselves as merely
agents.
We are to contemplate Christ. We are to do our God-given work in
our respective places, and by our own example call out the energies
of the church to a strenuous co-operation with heavenly agencies; for
it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.
God will honour His own name if we will clear the way by confessing
our sins and removing every stumbling block out of the path of those
who would be Christians were it not for the imperfect course of action
pursued by those who claim to be followers of Christ.
Constantly we fall into the error of imputing to the human agent
that which should be ascribed to God. This is one great reason why the
Lord cannot glorify His name as He longs to do. If He did, the human
agent would become self-sufficient, self-exalted. Men would ascribe
to themselves and to their human energies the honour that should be
given to God alone. We need to walk humbly with God. As teachers,
we should be very careful to make straight paths for our feet, lest the
lame be turned out of the way. In union with divine agencies, we shall
have hope and assurance of success, but not a jot of the glory is to be
ascribed to man. Having through faith, living, unwearied, persevering
faith, secured the co-operation of an all-powerful agency, men must
not make the mistake—... now the reason of the great feebleness seen
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in the churches—that it is their goodness and their merits that have
done this great work. When this feeling is cherished, self-exaltation
comes in and dishonours God. Self appropriates to itself the glory
that God should have. As God’s human agents we are to work with
unremitting diligence, straining every spiritual sinew and muscle to
lay hold of a power out of and above ourselves. Only thus can we
accomplish our work. The Lord Jesus is beside us, ready to grasp
the hand that is outstretched to Him who is omnipotent. When our
hopes are fulfilled, self is hid with Christ in God, and all glory is given
to the Captain of our salvation, who has anointed us with the oil of