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 to be a faithful servant you must work by your own individual faith and energy, without leaning on anyone but God. Service must always be by faith and one’s own communion with God. Even Saul could prophesy, when he was among the prophets, but David was always the same, in the cave or anywhere else. While the choicest blessings given me here are in fellowship, yet a man’s service must flow from Himself, or else there will be weakness. If I have the word of wisdom, I must 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 man prove his own work,” and then shall he have “rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.” In whatever place the grace of God leads us, there will be temptation; there is no escaping it, 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.
When there are great arrangements for carrying on work, there is not the recognition of this inherent blessing which tarries not for man, nor waits for the sons of men (Mic. 5:77And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. (Micah 5:7)). 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 Spirit in the individual. Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13) were sent forth by the Holy Spirit, 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.” Where 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 Jesus sets one to work. I know no other way.
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