One of the first things a child learns to do is to walk. Work comes afterward. And it is so in the kingdom of grace with God's children. To rush into work before we have learned to walk, is a reversal of God's order. We may be great workers, and we may make a great stir, without ever having learned to walk with God. Work is an important thing certainly, and, with perishing souls on every hand going down to a lost eternity, it behooves us to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. But the question that comes first is this: Amos 1 walking with God?—am I at one with God about the work I'm doing? Is it work which, in the holy calm of His presence He has sent me to do? Is it the fruit of communion and fellowship with Him who is my life? If so, it is well, and He is working in me mightily. If not, then I have set up business on my own account, so to speak. It is my own work I am doing, not the Lord's; it must therefore be burned in that day.