Connect your service with nothing but God—not with any particular set of persons. You may be comforted by fellowship, and your heart refreshed; but you must work by your own individual faith and energy, without leaning on any one whatever; for if you do, you cannot be a faithful servant. Service must ever be measured by faith, and one's own communion with God. Saul even may be a prophet when he gets amongst the prophets; but David was always the same—in the cave or any where. Whilst the choicest blessings given me here are in fellowship, yet a man's service must flow from himself: else there will be weakness. If I have the word of wisdom, I meet use it for the saint who may seek my counsel. It is: “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” But also: “Let every one prove his own work, and then shall he, have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another,” There is no single place grace brings us into but is a place of temptation, and that we cannot escape, though we shall be helped through. In every age, the blessing has been from individual agency and the moment it has ceased to be this, it has declined into the world. It is humbling, but it makes us feel that all comes immediately from God. The tendency of association is to make us lean upon one another.
Where there are great arrangements for carrying on work, there is not the recognition of the inherent blessing which “tarrieth not for the sons of men.” I do not tarry for man if I have faith in God. I act upon the strength of that. Let a man act as the Lord leads him. The Spirit of God is not to be fettered by man.
All power arises from the direct authoritative energy of the Holy Ghost in the individual. Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13.) were sent forth by the Holy Ghost, recommended to the grace of God by the church at Antioch; but they had no, communication with it till they returned, and then there was the joyful concurring of love in the service that had been performed. He that had talents went and traded. Paul says: “Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” When there is a desire to act, accompanied by real energy, a man will rise up and walk; but if he cannot do this, the energy is not there; and the attempt to move is only restlessness and weakness. Love for souls sets one to work. I know no other way.
J. N. D.