Servants of the Lord are apt to fall into the subtle mistake of calling the work mine instead of His. It is working for one's own credit rather than for His glory. It is attracting or trying to attract to me, not altogether to Him. And where shall we go for the remedy? It must be to Him. It must be found in the renewal (without one cloud, without even the cloud of our own restless activities coming between our souls and our sight of Him) of the views of the fair beauty of the Lord, and of the blessedness and pleasantness of our lot and part in Him.
Service is all the happier when it is not the source of the man's happiness. The source and secret of all happiness is Christ, and that secret acts equally, whether marked success at t ends action or speech, or apparently no success at all; whether the servant be put by the Master into the front rank of action in the harvest field, or told to sit down in a corner and sharpen the sickles of others; whether he be called to speak to a multitude in spiritual power, or to lie still on a bed of sickness.
It is one of the deepest and most sacred laws of the life of the children of God that their activity has its root in passivity; their strength has profoundly much to do with weakness; their rising up and going on, with giving way and sinking down, with that opposite of positive effort which is yet so fruitful of work-"Yield yourselves unto God."
I would most earnestly plead then, in the interests of true Christian service, for what in the hurrying times we need so much-a deeper entrance of our souls into the secret of the presence of the Lord. Work is not food for the spirit any more than for the body. Amidst a multitude of works the worker's soul may wither, and the works will feel the difference in due time. We must see to it, because we are bond servants and not contractors, that we are living and serving Him, not only so as to get through a great deal of action, but so as to be vessels meet for the Master's use, in His way, and not our own. And for this we must live, so to speak, behind our service; we must live in a blessed sense independent of it. We must live upon Christ, not upon energy, not upon success, not upon praise, not upon notice. God forbid! And to live upon Him in service, we must in the rule and habit of life watch over times of solemn, sacred intercourse with Him in secret. Thank God, the picture is not a visionary one. It is the secret of many a life of steadfast, humble, Christ-reflecting service in the Church of God.