Servants of the Lord are apt to fall into the subtle mistake of calling the work their own 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 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 attends 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 be told to sit down in a corner and sharpen the sickles of others, and whether he be called to speak to a multitude in spiritual power or to lie still on a bed of sickness.
Working for Work’s Sake
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. Amid 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 bondservants 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 fellowship 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.
Christian Truth, 14:29