Opportunities for Service and the Pressure of the Hour
By Milton C. Wilcox
M. C. WILCOX
(Reading for Tuesday, December 17)
There has never been a time since Jesus Christ led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men when there was not opportunity for service before every soul among Christ’s servants. But one thing is necessary on the part of the servant—consecration of body, soul, and spirit to the service of the Master.
One thing is mightily helpful on the part of the church—such simplicity of organization and broad and comprehensive plans of work as will encourage every member to feel, “There is work for me to do.”
Consecration
Consecration does not mean that our own work shall be first. When we yield ourselves to Christ, it is not to do service for ourselves. We are to be “his own servants.” God must be first in everything. The command is his that: “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” Physical powers, intellect, affections, are all to be given to him. Only so can we render the fullest, most satisfactory service.
Consecration does not mean that our work is to be considered equal in importance to the work of God. While he yokes up with us, counts us colaborers, we are yoke-fellows to do his work, not ours, and our work must be subject, secondary, always.
And yet God’s work is so ordered, his call is so considerate, his service is so blessed, that with our work second to that of the King of the universe, it is more satisfactory than it could be should it be first with us; because our good is first with him. In his wisdom there may not be so much of material prosperity, but more wealth of character, and character is eternal.
God’s work is so ordered, too, that wise, true, consecrated service demands that we should live healthfully, and so keep all our physical and mental powers at their maximum of value.
Why, O why, can not God’s people consecrate themselves to such service as this? Then indeed would the Spirit of God “clothe itself with” many a man and woman, as it did with Gideon of old (Judges 6:34, margin); and mighty works would be wrought for God.
The Leaders
This work of consecration must begin with the leaders among God’s people, the ministers in our conferences, the elders and deacons in our churches, the superintendents and teachers in our Sabbath-schools.
“For that the leaders took the lead in Israel,
For that the people offered themselves willingly,
Bless ye Jehovah.” Judges 5:2.
Even so will God win great victories for Israel now, when the leaders lead in consecration, and the ministers of God weep between the porch and the altar, and cry to God to spare his people. Then will Jehovah pity his people, and send “grain” and “new wine and oil.” See Joel 2:15-24.
The Church Helping
With the incoming of the Spirit there will be clearer vision, and plans more and more simple. We shall not feel that we must do some great and costly thing, with outer and visible display, in order to do service for God. It will be the kindly, helpful word, the Christian visit to a darkened home, the distribution of papers and tracts, the selling of papers and books, and a thousand other things, which the Spirit of God will suggest to hearts cleansed from pride and selfishness. We might build a sanitarium, open a bath-room, or establish a restaurant, or preach a brilliant sermon, and we would count that great work for God; but we would be more likely to take the glory to ourselves than in doing the little things, and receive no blessing.
It is ever the little deed which offers the opportunity, the deed that the devil ever declares we have no time to do, or that it would amount to nothing. Commercialism and fashion, joint tyrants and curses the world over, so fill the hearts and minds of some of the most capable of the professed children of God that they “have no time” to work for him. To such God speaks now: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee. Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Eph. 5:14-16.
The expression “redeeming the time” does not mean getting back spent days or hours or minutes; that kind of time once past never returns till we meet it at the bar of God. “Redeeming the time” means, literally, “buying up the opportunity.” There are opportunities for service on every side, which our poor, selfish, blinded eyes see, and thousands more beyond, which we shall see when we “do the next thing,”—the duties which lie close by.
“Buying” implies paying a price. “Buying up the opportunity” means that it will cost us ease, and pleasure, and selfish pursuits, and worldly ambition, and love of ease, and various things dear to our carnal nature. If we would rouse from our slothfulness and ease to work for God, give up all for God, and so, however busy with secular duties we may be, seek and find some opportunity to work for him. Our very life depends upon our breaking the bands which bind us, that we may have the opportunity to work for the Master.
The whole world stands with open doors inviting us to enter; but before the “great work,” which the heart sometimes longs to do for God, must come the testing on the little homely duties which are round us on every side. Said an earnest Methodist minister in Battle Creek one time, “If I had the organization of the Seventh-day Adventists, giving opportunity to labor to every soul, and the great Methodist Church, I would move the world.”
Organization is much, and our leaders leading in simplicity of organized work, enlisting every soul in the giving of the message, is more. But these must be subordinated to the outpouring and guidance of the Spirit of God. He has new things, great in their simplicity and effectiveness, which we have not yet seen. As truly as Israel of old, we “have not passed this way heretofore,” and there are in God’s great storehouse of supplies, in his wonderful counsel for those who follow the ark, things which our eyes have not seen, and our ears have not heard. But the secret to all the blessings lies in present consecration, present doing of the little duties, buying up present opportunities to work for our beloved Master.
The Pressure of the Hour
The pressure of the hour demands this. The harvest is ripe, the laborers are few.
“Men who are faithful are fainting today;
Worn with their labors, they fall by the way:
Fill ye the ranks, and with heart and with hand,
Gather in the blessed harvest, Christ gives command.”
“Pray for help, Christian.” Yes, but he who truly prays, first gives himself to answer God’s call, if it comes to him.
We may not dally now. We may not trifle with God on our soul’s eternal interest. The pressure of the hour is too great. What hour is it?—“The hour of His judgment,” which will “begin at the house of God.” It is the last generation on the mercy side of probation’s decisions. It is the time when God’s gracious threefold warning is spreading to all the world to save men from the fearful doom of the accumulated sins of the ages. It is the fulness of time when the great Master is preparing a people to stand when he shall come unto his own, and his undimmed glory shall cause all identified with sin to wither and burn in the forthshining of his presence. It is a time when recreant, faithless souls among his people shall have their names blotted from the Lamb’s book of life forever; when the devoted and faithful shall have every record of sin on the books of God against them blotted eternally from those books, because the divine Spirit, through grace, has blotted the sin forever from the heart and from the life.
From the last and the weakest generation of men, from the generation which has most perverted divine truth, God12is gathering a people who will be loyal to him whatever may come, a people whom he can seal for eternity with his holy name.
Salvation from Great Delusions
As we near the end of earth’s last hour of trial, Satan will put forth greater effort to deceive. Every delusion of the past, every means which he can invent or devise, will be used to deceive or destroy the elect of God. And the time is even now. Intensity is taking possession of all the forces of evil. It is the last struggle of the devil and his angels before the end.
Every great truth of God, every genuine monument of strength among his people, will be counterfeited by the enemy, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness (having the appearance of righteousness), and with such overwhelming display of force, of numbers, of “outward show,” that all the world will be swallowed up in the deception. The power of Satan will be called “the great power of God.” The laws of the world will be denominated the laws of the Most High, and the rulers of the earth his representatives. And how rapidly are all the forces of evil developing into that condition where the hypnotism of the devil will swing them into united opposition to the work of God. Even now we see the meaning of the vision of the prophet: “multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.”
God, too, is terribly in earnest. All the agencies of heaven are enlisted in the last struggle of the ages. As Jesus declared, when he neared the last great conflict with the prince of darkness, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” so God’s people may feel as they near the end. Assuredly the baptism of suffering and trial and service lies before; and as the awful evil and deadly miasma of the time presses upon them, and they realize their own unworthiness, they enter into the heart of the Master again: “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?” Shall I say, “Father, save me from this hour”? Selfishness might so plead, but not loyal consecration. The prince of the world came with the temptation, but found no response. And the answer of the Man of Calvary was, “But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name.” And the answer came from the throne, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” And God first glorified it in the suffering and sacrifice his Son for us.
Great and awful is the pressure of this hour. The great needy world stands open, waiting, longing, pleading for light. How few we are! How small are our resources! How great the consecration demanded! Shall we pray, “Father, save us from this hour,” or shall we recognize that this is God’s opportunity for us? Shall we demonstrate in experience that the consecrated recognition of our necessity is his opportunity to work for us, to work with us, to enable us to do his work? Of that remnant it shall be said, “As in the days of thy coming forth out of the land of Egypt will I show unto them marvelous things. The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might.” And when the perils thicken, and the forces of evil are concentrated against them, “Jehovah of hosts will defend them.” Our part is consecration of all to his service. And if we are faithful in this time of service, he will keep us in that awful hour which lies just before. “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”
“Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” Let this be the prayer of every one:—
“Take my soul and body’s powers,
Take my memory, mind, and will;
All my goods and all my hours;
All I know and all I feel;
All I think or speak or do;
Take my heart, and make it new.”
This prayer acknowledges our dependence upon God day by day.
Trace the development of a loaf of bread from the planting of the seed containing the life-germ placed there by God’s hand, in God’s earth, and nourished by his sunshine and rain, through the various stages,—growing grain, wheat kernels, flour, bread.
How appropriate this prayer when “only one summer-blessing of God stands between the world and starvation.”
In this prayer we recognize the Father’s loving care for the creatures he has made:—
