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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 21, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 21.

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BUSINESS

The King's Messenger

DOES the Holy Spirit desire us to engage in the active business life, or the rather to withdraw into solitude, separation, quietude, away from the noise and clattering of the machinery of worldly strife?
This is the question that is pressing upon many anxious, earnest hearts that desire and design to follow. What are we to do in relation to business? Is it possible to engage in the business of to-day, and be filled with the Holy Ghost, and love God with all the heart and our neighbor as ourselves? What is to be done?
The Holy Ghost is the God of business, the God of affairs. He has to do with creation, and with all the works of God. He comes into the heart, and molds the life, not to make it inert, inactive, and lazy, but to augment its powers and increase its activity, adaptability, and usefulness. He comes in to be made unto us wisdom, to cause us to be diligent in business, and to work together with Him in the work of the age. He comes into our heart to make it not only His temple, His armory, His arsenal, but His manufactory as well; His abiding, accounting, and developing place of abode.
The God of business desires the man or woman of business to enter into a co-partnership with Him; so we may be workers together. He delights to make business men and women; so the more intimate we are with Him, the more adapted we are to do business for and with Him for the benefit of our fellow men. He will eliminate selfishness from business,—we will do business not to get rich, not to accumulate wealth, not to secure honor nor achieve success; but our eye will be single, and we will do business in, for, and with Him for others of our own and of distant lands. We will gather to scatter, we will use to bless.
We have no right to hide the talent in a napkin, and bury it in the earth. We are to use and increase its usefulness for the glory of God in the good of men. A Holy Ghost business life is a most blessed and desirable life, giving active play to all your faculties, bringing out the latent powers, developing, strengthening, and enlightening us, and bringing us into sweetening relationships to God and man, making our own lives sublime by the constant contact, the needed friction, and the continual testing.
Business men for God! for God is for business men. Cast all your care on Him. He careth for you. Do business without care, or anxiety, or worry, so we may do business for God. He needs, wants, desires, unsordid, unselfish business people that He may use, prosper, bless, so that He may lift business life out of the plane in which it has fallen, to a higher, holier, heartier position, and make a business life in keeping with the occupation of the Son of God, whose life was summed up in the sentence, “He went about doing good.”