Your ShelfYour Projects

SAVED BY FAMILIES

8%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 20, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 12.

Read the full edition

SAVED BY FAMILIES.

By S. M. I. H.

WE are “laborers together with God.”
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
Not in vain: and yet there is many a mother and many a father who is looking about in sorrowful amazement, and saying, “But my labor is in vain. I have labored, but it has come to naught. I have done a great deal, but the very work that is the nearest is not done.”
I fully believe that this sense of failure in the home life is at the foundation of more invalidism than any other one thing. Many are looking about, trying to find something to do for the Lord, and are perplexed, and are losing their faith and hold upon God, simply because they can not find the Lord’s work, when it is lying all about their feet in the family life.
The staying of your feet at home need not prevent you from going; for there is more than one way of going. The little circuit of the home is large enough for all the going that God requires of a woman with a family of young children; and any going that would for a moment cause her to neglect this work would be equivalent to the gadding about, which is denounced in Jer. 2: 36.
To “go” is not necessarily to put one foot before another, to take a train and put miles between you and your home. The first going must always be out of self; and one can do that without stirring a foot. By that going out first to the limits of the home by every impulse, thought, and word, by all of Christ that one can know, the home will become a reservoir of holy, health-giving atmosphere, from which all who come within its influence will be refreshed.
Get out to the limits of your home first. Get out to your husband and the children; wife, husband, and children, go out after one another; go out to those in the neighborhood, go out to the grocer’s boy who delivers the goods that you have purchased,—go out covered, as it is your privilege, with that luminous spiritual garment woven of the word of God, and all your going will be a continual giving out of Christ.
Out of self, it is not far into the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and there is health and vigor and all things that are needed to make Christ visible. You may be, in yourself, both an intake and an outlet of that power which has its depository in him, and for lack of which the world—maybe that part of it which you call your own family—is dying.
There is one most wonderful assurance in the word of God, folded up within which is hidden every promise that has ever been given: “For the promise [of the Holy Ghost] is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” Acts 2: 38, 39.
It may be that some have wandered so far from every true principle that they are exposed to every evil influence. These must be brought in; for, as in the time of the Egyptian plagues, so now, “upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die.” “But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, . . . that ye may know that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” Ex. 9: 19; 11: 7.
That “all power” is given that you may be able to go out and bring all your children home out of the hail that will soon begin to fall, and protect them from the tongue of any dog. “Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel.” Jer. 2: 4. “Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goeth forth with fury, a continuing whirlwind: it shall fall with pain upon the head of the wicked. The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return, until he have done it, and until he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it.” Jer. 30: 23, 24. “At the same time, saith the Lord, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.” Jer. 31: 1.
S. M. I. H.