Chapter 8
Again, we are exhorted to “wait on the Lord, and keep his way” (Psa. 37: 34). If wrongs are not righted, if persecutions continue, if, like Paul, we have a “thorn in the flesh” and our desires are not granted, let us do what this text tells us—let us “keep His way.” Let us serve the Lord just as truly as though conditions were ideal and all our desires satisfied. Let us show our fidelity to God, by being true whether circumstances are favorable or unfavorable. God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, but he went up and down in it for many years as a stranger. His posterity went into Egypt and there, under the lash of the taskmaster, they waited, waited, waited. Did not they have God’s promise? Had he not said that that goodly land should be theirs? Why did he wait so long? Was this the way that he fulfilled his promise? Had he forgotten them? Did their cries to him fall on deaf ears? Their waiting was not easy. It was long and oh, how wearisome! Why did God wait so long, was there any adequate reason? Yes, when God waits there is always a good reason for the waiting. His acts are not arbitrary; he does not act according to caprice; he acts wisely and when it is best. He tells us why he delayed in this case—it was because the sins of the Canaanites had not yet come to the full. When they reached that point, the Lord fulfilled his promise and led the children of Israel out of their bondage into that goodly land.
Have you learned this lesson of waiting upon the Lord? Can you commit your ways to him and feel that if desire is still unsatisfied, if obstacles are not yet removed, if trials yet bear upon you, the Father-love is not growing cold, nor his hearing dull, nor has he forgotten? In the proper time and way the answer will be sure, and because of the delay the answer will be fuller and will enrich you more than if it had come when first you asked. Wait patiently on the Lord, trust also in him, be not weary in well-doing, and out of your waiting will come strength, and out of your sorrow will come rejoicing, and out of the bitterness will come sweetness, and at the end of the way you will find a crown and life everlasting.
TALK TWENTY-THREE. THREE NECESSARY “RATIONS”
The soul, like the body, must have something to nourish and strengthen it, to give it vigor and vitality. An army will have neither the strength nor the courage to fight unless it has its rations. And if I may be allowed a play on words, I may say that there are three rations which are very needful to every Christian. Without these he must be weak and faltering and of little service, but with them he may be a pillar of strength in the temple of God.
The first of these “rations” is _aspiration_, or ardent desire. Strong desire is one of the greatest incentives of life. To be contented as we are is one of the most fatal hindrances to progress and activity. There is nothing to stir us to action when desire is satisfied. The trouble with a great multitude of people is that they are satisfied when conditions do not warrant it. If we are to make progress in the Christian life or accomplish anything for God, we must have strong aspirations. These are as a spur to our energies. Aspiration is the cure for being “at ease in Zion.” Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we aspire to be leaders, as so many religious people do, only that they may have authority or honor—our aspirations are evil. But each one of us owes it to himself and to God to desire strongly to be and to do his best for God.
What is the temperature of your spiritual aspirations today? Are you so well satisfied that desire is cold and almost lifeless? or are you reaching out to the things that are before with an eager yearning? No matter how good or how holy you may be, if you look Christward until you see the depths of his submission to the Father, the length of his love for souls, the heights of his lofty purity and unworldliness, the tenderness of his sympathy, the richness of his communion with the Father, his self-abnegation, his humility, and his unswerving faithfulness, your soul will feel itself so immeasurably beneath Christ that you can not help longing to be more like him. It will create in your soul an inexpressible aspiration to draw further away from this old world with its trifles and its follies and to draw nearer to Christ, to be more like him in your inner life, and to act more like him in your outward life. If you look only at self and self-interest, your spiritual aspirations will fade away; but as you look away from self and behold Him who is altogether lovely, the more you look upon him the greater will be your desire to be conformed to his likeness and submitted to his will.
Each of us ought to desire to be our best for God. Do not be content to be one of the “weak ones,” or even an average Christian. Those souls who rise above the average, those who are bright lights in their communities, are not the ones who are easily satisfied with their attainments, nor are they the ones who are willing to be this year as they were last year or the year before. You, as well as anyone else, can be a bright light if you will. You can be spiritual if you will. It is not a question of God’s blessing some more than others; it is a question of desire that spurs to active effort to become spiritual.
There is much work to be done, and you have a part in that work. How great that part may be depends more upon your desire to work than upon anything else. Are you, like many professed Christians, willing enough for others to work and willing to be idle yourself? If you really _want_ to do something for the kingdom, there is something that you can do. If you are willing to do anything, no matter what, God will see that you have something to do. No matter how small your task is, it is worth doing well. Look upon the fields, not those afar off, but those about you. All around you are souls going to destruction. Forget your own concern. Look at the needs about you till your heart is filled with desire for these souls, till you covet them for the Master as a miser covets gold. Then you will find work enough to do and strength to do it.
The second “ration” is _inspiration_. There is so much half-hearted work, so much done mechanically, so much form in worship and service. What we need is enthusiasm. We hear much about artistic inspiration and poetic inspiration, but what we really need most of all is spiritual inspiration. Religious forms are cold and dead until there is put into them the warmth of enthusiasm. Get your soul filled with this glowing warmth. It will lighten your tasks. It will bring success instead of failure. It will be a well-spring of joy. It will make an optimist of you. It will help you break down barriers. It will enable you to surmount obstacles. It will put the shout of victory in your soul in the very face of your foes. An enthusiastic man is a victorious man. An enthusiastic church is a victorious church. Enthusiastic work and worship are filled with a vitality that makes them worth while.
Do not be content to be a formalist. Throw yourself into your work. Go at things as though you meant business. Do not be a lazy Christian. An indolent way of doing things can be neither joyful nor successful. The more of your heart you put into your work, the more it will mean to you, and the more it means to you, the more you can accomplish. Have confidence that you will succeed, for confidence will help you attain to your desires. Your energy wisely directed has in it the very element of success. Look at what others are accomplishing by hard work and perseverance. The same qualities in you will win. But keep this one thing in view, that without inspiration or enthusiasm you lack much of the winning quality. Cultivate enthusiasm. Do with your might what your hands find to do.
The third “ration” needful is _consideration_. This serves as a balance for the two former rations. Its absence has caused disaster many times. Many people grow very enthusiastic and aspire to great things, but because they lack consideration they run into wild fanaticism and go to great extremes; and as a result both they and their religion lose the respect and confidence of the people. How especially true this is in some of the modern holiness movements! Their adherents give themselves over to unseemly demonstrations, ignore good judgment, and teach things and do things they would not if they stopped to carefully consider them.
Salvation and all that pertains to it stand on the foundation of wisdom and good sense. Anything that is not according to these is out of harmony with the true principles of religion. So we should weigh our every act and all our teachings in the balance of good judgment. What in our lives or teaching does not appeal to the sound judgment and good sense of others had better be rejected. Genuine holiness, because of its reasonableness, appeals to the intellect and heart of every man. Extremism and fanaticism are not part of true religion. Throw plenty of enthusiasm into your work, but see to it that that enthusiasm is held in proper channels by consideration. Do not let it overflow without bounds. It is sure to run in the wrong direction if you do.
God has given us the power of consideration and understanding to control and guide our energies. By means of these faculties we get the highest and best use of our powers. To act without consideration is very often to act wrongly. God’s acts are always wise, and to be godlike means for us to use what wisdom he gives to us.
Let us be sure that we have these three needful “rations” and that we make the use of them that God has designed. We shall then be successful Christians and accomplish the work that it pleases God for us to do. Aspire to be and do your best. Throw your soul into whatever you undertake. Be careful and considerate in all your ways, so that you “shall neither be barren nor unfruitful,” but that you “shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.”
TALK TWENTY-FOUR. A RETREAT, OR A ROUT?
Armies often suffer defeat, but there is a great difference in the way they take defeat. Sometimes an army is overcome and driven out of its position, but retreats only as far as it must, then turns again upon the foe to courageously renew the conflict. Other armies have been defeated, and in a panic have thrown away their weapons and fled in disorder. The first, though defeated, retains its honor, while the others have nothing but shame.
Similar things are seen in individual lives. There are those who suffer temporary defeat, but who count it only temporary and set themselves immediately to the task of gathering together their forces and retrieving what they have lost. Others, when they realize a defeat, give up all as lost, throw down their weapons, and cease to fight. They forsake the ranks of God’s people, sometimes for a very trifling reason, and go back into the world and suffer the shame that attaches to a backslider. The serious part of this is that many can do such a thing and consider it a rather light matter. Instead of being a light matter, turning away from God is one of the most terrible things that a soul can do and one which is often fraught with the direst results and would be every time were it not for the exceeding mercy of God. How it is that one who has ever truly loved God can turn away from him and plunge again into the follies of the world, doing those things which he knows God abhors, is more than I can understand. Sometimes those who once seemed to be quite spiritual are now among the most wicked, even worse than before they ever made a profession.
In one of the Southern States lived a lady who had at different times professed to be saved, but as often backslid. Her daughter, while conversing with me one day, said, “When Mother goes back, she goes full length to the world.” She went on to tell me that when her mother gave up her profession she at once laid aside her plain attire and decked herself in jewelry and gay clothing and began attending worldly places of amusement. She seemed to think that when she no longer claimed to be saved she could cast off all restraint and ignore God’s claims upon her entirely, and that it did not matter what she did now. Her excuse was, “Oh, I am not saved now.” Just as though that changed in any degree her solemn responsibility to obey God!
I was talking with a man who had been a preacher. I spoke to him about something that had happened in his life on a certain occasion. He had been guilty of immoral conduct. He acknowledged it with apparently no sense of shame, saying, “Oh, I was not professing then.” He acted as though he thought his past conduct made no difference in respect to his present standing or influence. Some people seem to think that backsliding gives them some sort of indulgence or license to act as they please. Such a view is equally dishonoring to God and to themselves. Sin makes a stain that never can be eradicated. Do not forget this. I make the statement advisedly. I am aware that many persons do not view it thus, but it is only because they do not consider the question as it should be considered. Even the blood of Christ, all-powerful as it is, is not sufficient. This is not heresy; it is solemn truth, and, reader, the sooner you find it out the better. It may make the matter of sin appear more serious to you. The blood of Christ will wash away the guilt of our sins, if we truly repent and believe, and our hearts may be made as pure as though we had never sinned; but the stain of it lies ever upon our memory, and its somber shadow lies upon our life whenever memory calls it to view. No doubt that shadow will be as eternal as our souls.
Its stain also lies upon our reputation. Men do not forget such things. If you backslide and go into sin, you may obtain salvation again through the forbearance of God, but you can not get away from the stigma of your backsliding. The sins you committed may be forgiven by the saints, for “charity shall cover a multitude of sins,” but the world neither forgets nor forgives. The preacher who, after he has preached to others to live right, goes into sin, can not expect repentance to put him back where he was before, except in the mercy of God. He will have his sin to live down. His words will have lost their power. His influence will have greatly suffered.
This is true of others as well as of preachers. David was a man of God; he sinned, and to this day men despise him for it. The skeptic and the infidel cease not to point to the sad spectacle. The one sin of Peter in denying his Lord stands out today as a dark stain upon his life. O my friend, if you have been defeated in your Christian life, if you have lost the sacred treasure of salvation from your heart, I adjure you today that you do not throw away everything, but value at their true worth the things that remain to you, and hold them fast. In your righteous life you formed many good habits; do not turn away from them, hold fast to them. You had a thankful and appreciative heart toward God; do not become hard and thankless. You had a reverence for holy things; do not let it go. You had a desire to please God; keep that desire still warm in your bosom. Keep your face turned Godward, not worldward, and make your way back to him at once.
Sometimes people sin against God, then immediately cease their profession and just drift along day after day, making no effort to obtain forgiveness. They think they will “get saved again” when some evangelist comes to hold a revival. We often see reports of meetings saying that so many “backsliders were reclaimed.” This expression tells a sad story of such careless living before God that it makes one’s heart sad to contemplate it. If Satan gets advantage of you, or your foot slips in your upward climb, do not let go all holds and go clear to the bottom into the pit of sin, there to lie carelessly; do not lose an inch more than you can help losing. If you have sinned, resolutely determine that you will not add to it another sin. Repent of the one committed and press your way right back to God; do not wait for some preacher; do not wait for anything; return to God. To drift along and wait is folly. It is giving Satan all the chance he needs.
One of the most hurtful ideas existing among us today is, that one sin puts a man back in the same place where he was before he was saved. Nothing could be more false; nothing could more obscure what salvation has done for him. Nothing could tend more to make him indifferent and careless. I want to oppose that idea with all my strength, for it is Satan’s lie. When a man sins he becomes guilty, but the good character that has been built up, the pure feelings and desires, the right habits of thought and action, the Christian point of view to which he has attained—these are all a wealth that he still possesses. They are something of exceeding value, which in a large measure still remain in his possession. They are, however, in serious danger. If he persists in sin, he will lose them all; but if he recovers himself in time, he will save them.
I offer no excuse for sin; it is terrible, and how quickly its deadly infection spreads through all the being! Fear it as you would fear a plague. If you have sinned, make your way back to God at once before that sin shall “increase to more ungodliness.” If you are a backslider, do not think that it does not matter what you do; for it does matter greatly. Do not add sin to sin, increasing your guilt; but let the fear of God be upon your heart. If you are overcome, do not let yourself be routed. Do not throw away your weapons in a panic, but turn again and face the foe and fight him until the victory comes, until you regain what you have lost, until you stand “more than conqueror through him that loved us.”
TALK TWENTY-FIVE. MY DREAM MESSAGE
Solomon says that dreams come “through the multitude of business.” Our night thoughts are like our day thoughts, except that our faculties being partly asleep, our dreams usually lack the coherence and the reasonableness of our waking thoughts. God does occasionally, at rare intervals, operate upon men’s minds to cause them to dream something; but even the prophets with whom he thus communicated more than with ordinary men received such messages only now and then, and their other dreams had no significance.
Many people are always trying to find some hidden meaning in their dreams. If they have some peculiar dream, they try to interpret it or to get somebody else to do so. Now, God is reasonable. He knows that we can better comprehend when we are awake than when we are asleep; so he usually communicates with us during our waking hours. We sometimes have very striking dreams, but this does not signify that the Lord originated them. I have known people to act very unwisely as the result of following dreams. One night a preacher, who was holding a series of meetings, dreamed of having a terrible fight with a great snake. When he awoke, he felt that surely the Lord was trying to show him something. He interpreted the dream to mean that somebody in the congregation was represented by that snake. The next day he told his dream in the meeting and said that he thought he knew who the snake was. He began acting upon his supposition. The result was that at least two of the congregation backslid over it, and the whole church was thrown into confusion.
A dream is a dream, and possibly not more than one in ten thousand come from God. There are times, however, when we may learn good lessons from our dream thoughts as well as from our waking thoughts. One such dream I once had, and the lesson I derived from it has been good for my soul. I dreamed that I stood beside a gigantic wild rosebush. In my hand I held one of the beautiful fragrant flowers. I looked at it and drank in its rich perfume, but I saw a great number of flowers, and I desired more than the one, so I held it in my left hand and began to reach up for others. They were very high, so I pressed against the outer limbs and stretched to my utmost, but they were too high; I could not get them. I stepped back from the bush. As I did so, my gaze fell upon the rose in my hand just in time to see its petals fall to the ground. In stretching for those beyond my reach, I had ruined the one that was already mine. I gazed upon the empty stem in my hand and at the bruised petals upon the ground with a feeling of regret.
The scene changed. I sat at a desk with pencil and paper, and in my dream wrote these words: “If you have but one rose, enjoy it to the full. Do not let its perfume be wasted upon the empty air, and its beauty go unnoticed, while you spend your time in vain longing for the unattainable.” When I awoke I wrote down the words that I had written in my dream, and through the years they have preached to me many a sermon.
How natural it is for us to forget what we have while we look at others whom we think to be more fortunate! We look at the blessings that others enjoy and forget to be thankful for our own. We look at others’ possessions, and because they are greater than ours, we fail to appreciate what we have. Our position in life may be very humble, but however humble, our life is full of blessings if we but have eyes to see them.
When I had this dream, my health was gone, and I lay alone in my bed throughout the long hours of the day while my wife was away working for our support. My eyes were so I could read but a very little. We had two rooms in a house with another family. All around us were people with health and plenty. I could easily realize the difference between my situation and theirs. Sometimes I would look out of the window and see people passing, strong and vigorous and care-free. I would hear the gay laughter and the sound of happy voices, while I—there I lay suffering and alone. How easy it was to see their blessings! and in seeing theirs, how easy it was to forget my own!
But this dream came upon the morning of my birthday; and as I lay there thinking it over, I determined that in the coming year I would not let my one rose be spoiled because I was reaching for that which was beyond my reach. I decided to enjoy my own blessings. If others were more blessed than I, should I not rejoice in the fact? Longing to be like them would not make me so. If I had but little to enjoy, I would enjoy that little. So I began to look at my blessings, and as I looked them over I found them greater than I had supposed. I had many things to give me comfort. I had food to satisfy my hunger. I had a home and clothing. I had the loving care of a faithful wife. I had kind friends who gave to me freely of their sympathy and who were ready to grant my every wish so far as it lay in their power. Better than all else, I had the peace of God in my heart. I began to realize that my state might be far worse.