p. 10 | The Right Motive

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 8, 1902

The Right Motive

LET the motive of devotion to God be the first object of our missionary gift, and how it changes its aspect! We are seized with the conviction of the overwhelming love of God. Love for me—that he condescends to care for me. Love for all men—that he condescends to care for them. Love for me and them—that he condescends to use me to bring a blessing to them. How this loving condescension of God develops the love of man to man. They are dependent—God makes them dependent—on me. His love for them is to be shown through me. He uses me as an instrument in showing his love for them. I become a middleman, a mediator, between God and men. And all this, not because God cannot act directly upon these others, but because he so loves me that he uses me to do that which, humanly speaking, he could do much more easily without me. Being desirous of opening his glorious kingdom to the millions of China and Japan and Africa and America, he, instead of going to them, comes to me, and tells me, on behalf of him, to tell them. What you, unthinkable evidence of the love of God for me, that he should make me an instrument of showering his blessing on these others whom he loves! Lord, what am I that thou visitest me, and givest me the high dignity of acting as thy vicar on earth!

But suppose I am unwilling to do this? Suppose Noah had refused to build the ark; suppose Abram had refused to set out from Ur; suppose Isaiah had refused to prophesy; suppose Mary had refused to receive the angelic salutation—does any one wildly suppose the omnipotence of God would have been thwarted? God, in his love, chose to use Noah, Abram, Isaiah, Mary,—his servants in all ages, even me,—to act as his agents in performing his mighty works; but never, never once, did he abdicate his power to do it without them. God reigns; not Noah, nor Abram, nor Isaiah, nor Mary, nor I, nor even the twentieth-century millionaire who can write or erase his bequest of thousands or of millions.

Herein, then, is the motive for missionary work. God lifts me up to such a mission as he conferred upon each one of those through whom he did his wondrous works of old. He makes me his vicegerent in his work. And this he does, as an act of love to me. The love shown in my gift to him, is as nothing compared with the love shown by him in accepting and using that gift. It is not I who am generous, but God.—The Living Church.