Everything Ready-Use It by Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 9, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 15.

Everything Ready—Use It.

By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

WHEN our blessed Lord told us that impressive parable about the great supper, he intended to clinch this truth that God provides and we have only to use his provisions. "Come; for all things are now ready," is the message which big-hearted hospitality sends out. The invited guests are not required to go to market, or to set the table. All that is done for them; their duty is to come and partake of the banquet.

This is the way that our wise and loving God acts in the natural world. He sets the winds in motion and the mariner has but to spread his sails to the breeze. He sends water on its down-hill course, and the miller places his overshot wheel in its path, and the grain is ground. My house is lighted and warmed by what the Creator lodged in so many tons of coal. All these natural forces,—wind-power, steam-power, water-power, and the power of soil to grow vegetation,—seem to say to man, "Come, for we are all ready; use us." If man foolishly neglects to employ these forces, he finds no substitutes and he fails. Success in agriculture, commerce, manufactures, etc., all depends on taking advantage of what God has already provided.

Precisely in the same way does our heavenly Father act in the spiritual world. Everything that he could do for the salvation of your soul and my soul, he has done or is willing to do. Our Bible tells us everything that we need to know about himself and about ourselves; that word is absolutely perfect, both to enlighten the eyes, to direct our footsteps, to convert the soul and lead it Godward and Heavenward. Your Bible is ready to your hand, my friend. Use it. Wherever you find a vital truth, accept it. Wherever you discover a precious promise, trust the promise. When you encounter a command of Christ, obey it. That is the right way to make your Bible a blessing. All the discourses of a Spurgeon or a Moody about the word of God are only reflected light. Open your soul's windows to the glorious sun of revealed truth and let the light pour in; then walk according to the light.

The central truth in your Bible is that Jesus Christ has made a sacrifice for the sins of every human being; so that no sinner need perish for want of an atonement. Jesus Christ by his self-sacrifice on the cross has provided a redemption for a universe of sinners. So has God provided winds enough to carry all the fleets of the globe from here to Liverpool; but only those vessels are actually borne thither which are placed in the path of the winds. The loving Jesus has tasted death once for you, my friend. He never will do it again. The indescribable benefits of his atonement are ready for you and waiting. How are you to use them? Come to him in honest penitence and say to him (with your conduct backing your words):—

"Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling; Vile, I to this fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die."

Come to him in prayer, and ask him to forgive you, to give you his presence and his power. Come to him also in practice, by beginning at once to do what will please him, or, in other words, to keep his commandments. Pray don't wait for a "revival" to come, or any evangelist to come, or any violent excitement to arise in your own mind. Jesus does not say, "Come to church, or to the Bible, or to an inquiry-meeting;" he says with all the authority of his mighty love "Come unto me." If anybody gets between you and Christ, he is an intruder and a hindrance. Jesus stands ready; hasten to him; he is the LIFE.

But you may say, "I have often tried to be a Christian; I have done the best I could; my heart won't yield, and I am discouraged." Your "best" does not amount to a farthing; your efforts to regenerate your own heart without the Holy Spirit are all doomed to utter failure. That Holy Spirit is offered you; he is ready to do the mighty work which he only can do; but you must co-operate with the gracious Spirit, just as truly as the sailor must co-operate with the fair wind, or the miller with the stream of water. But how? I answer: Stop resisting him as you have been all the while doing. Yield to him. If he suggests a vital truth, accept it. If he suggests anything to be said, say it. If he moves you to do any right thing, lose no time in doing it. As he convicts you of personal sins, break off those sins, cost what it may. Be sure of one thing, and that is that the Holy Spirit will point you only to Jesus Christ, and will shut you up to Jesus alone for your salvation. Do you insist that you have been obeying the divine Spirit all along, and co-operated with him; and yet you are no nearer being a Christian than ever? If this be so, you are the only person in God's universe that ever had such an experience. It is impossible. Again I say, the Holy Spirit is ready; do not grieve him away by an hour's delay, or by doing one act of willful sin.

If the truth were known, I suspect that the real trouble with you is that you have neglected to use what God has provided for you. It makes no odds what the fever patient does with his medicine as long as he does not take it. No cure for him until he uses it. It is the neglect of Christ's offered LIFE that will yet destroy your soul. Grasp him as your life, and the work is done.

Observe, also, how God has provided in you all the appliances, so to speak, for Christ and his gospel and Spirit to act upon. You have a mental eye to see Jesus. Use it, or you may lose it! You have a conscience which, like an ear, hears God's voice. Obey it, or else it may become deaf and dead by long neglect. There is a faith-faculty in your nature, which, like a hand, can lay hold on Christ. Tie up that hand, and it will wither or be paralyzed. In addition to all these provisions, God offers you his infinite and immediate help. He does so now—not tomorrow. Everything that a loving God could possibly provide for you is at your hand. You have not a shadow of excuse for going to hell. Are you ready, dear friend, to come to Jesus?—T. L. Cuyler, D. D.