FOR the young Christian, today is a day of unprecedented scope in service. In many circles there is a far readier ear for the vitality of Youth than for the better sense and experience of Age.
Today, on the other hand, is a day of apathy and self-complacency in the world (not to speak of the Church) and a veritable spiritual volcano is needed to stir the men and women, with whom we are brought in contact, to a sense of their need. Men and women do not believe that they are sinners these days, and they can find a vast weight of scholarship and even religion to back them up.
Perhaps the open-air is the best place to discover the general opinions of the great mass of people that fill our crowded streets. A great diversity of unbelief is found in every crowd that gathers round a speaker in the open air, but underlying most attacks is the rebellious will that condescendingly tolerates God as long as He does not interfere too drastically with the smooth-running of a self-centered life.
It is in this state of things that the young Christian, after running his head once or twice against a stone wall of unbelief, whether cultured or crude, may give up all his glowing day-dreams, and turn aside to seek gratification in some service a bit more showy. Thus he is lost to God’s work, and he loses the glorious privilege of standing in the gap, of making up the hedge in the place where God had placed him.
It is so easy. Young blood is welcomed today; mistakes are tolerated, and even swelled-head is overlooked.
What a temptation there is to lose the keen God-given desire to do His will, come what may, and to be found in the line of His purpose, however menial, unromantic, or even heart-breaking it may seem!
“I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me... but I found NONE” (Ezek. 22:3030And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. (Ezekiel 22:30)). Today the Church is broken, torn with the dissensions of party strife that nothing but the coming of the Lord from heaven will heal. God is looking for men — not strong men, nor talented men, nor those upon whom nature has bestowed her most lavish gifts; but those, who having been forgiven much, love much; those who are ready to present their bodies a living sacrifice so as to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:22And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2)), and that Christ may live in them.
How can we learn the secret of victory? How can we tap the resources of almighty power? For we are no paupers. All things are ours, and we have but to draw upon His riches in glory.
Of course, to begin with we do not know our Bibles as we ought. Our Lord Himself was content to use the Sword of the Spirit and it is little wonder that our lack of dexterity in wielding this mighty weapon against the powers of darkness is the cause of a great deal of failure. There is only one remedy for this, and that is to read our Bibles more often and with keener concentration, in dependence upon the teaching of the Spirit. There, are many helps to the reading and remembering of the Scriptures, such as various systems of marking. It is impossible to lay down any laws, as some are better without any such system, and others find one more helpful than another.
But assuming that I know the Bible from end to end, there may be still something lacking that will paralyses my hand, and leave me powerless. When the Midianites were put to flight in Judges, the cry was not “The Sword of the Lord,” nor yet “The sword of Gideon,” for unless the Sword of the Lord was Gideon’s sword too, it would be useless to him; and on the other hand if it were merely Gideon’s sword it would be powerless against the hosts of the Midianites. No, it must be “The Sword of the Lord, and of Gideon,” and then it will put the stoutest foe to rout. So too, with you and me, the Bible may be but a cold dead archaic thing if I try to use it before it has become part of my own being, molding my life day by day, transforming my heart into a palace by its effect, cutting like a two-edged sword, breaking like a hammer the adamant rock of self; warning, encouraging, feeding, comforting, till at last by a subtle alchemy it has transmuted the base metal of my mind into the gold which alone will stand the test of the fire of God.
Within these bare thousand pages of Scripture lies the secret of every problem, the answer to every question of the heart of man. Within this body of mine dwells the Spirit of God, the Book’s Interpreter. What more can the mind conceive to ask for?
Let us just open our hearts to the influence of the Word, and ask God by His Holy Spirit to make the Book live to us. In the open air we shout at the top of our voices that “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son...” —we put pathos into our voices, and we are a little stirred to think that the people are unmoved by such overwhelming love. We cycle away home in the dusk, and say to each other — “What a dreadfully hard, indifferent place that is!” And God looks down upon our hearts and He says, “Willing hearts, but oh, how blind.”
It is our hearts that are hard. We preach the Love of God, but it has never melted us. We preach of Judgment to come, but our hearts are not filled with praise to God for having brought us from the horrible pit, nor yet with anguish and tears for our own fellows who are spurning God’s mercy, and are in mortal danger of everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.
Yes, it is our hearts that are hard. They are dry like the heather of the hill-side, and cold like the granite rocks. Nothing but the dynamite of God’s love can break them, and nothing but the dew of Hermon can soften them.
Do you preach love? Then preach it from a heart in which His love has been shed abroad by the Spirit. Pray for the sense of it to overshadow your whole being. Do you preach the Cross? Then preach it as being crucified with Christ. Do you preach Sin? Preach it with fear, remembering that it was your sins that nailed Him to Calvary — that it is your daily sins that grieve His heart.
Oh, let us not think that the Gospel is only for the unsaved. Let it work in us cutting relentlessly at the apathy, sin, selfishness, irritation, and passion that so easily beset us―daily fashioning us in the likeness of Him, whom not having seen, we love. So shall we learn the secret of Power.
A. F. S. Pollock.