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How Shall we Labor?

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 25, 1872

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 40, No. 2.

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How Shall we Labor?

By A. M. L.

THIS is a question at this time of much importance. To those who are professing to believe and obey the present truth, there is a great work committed. The responsibility that rests on each individual is immense, and may not be put off with safety to ourselves. God is able to carry on his work independently of our aid, but it is according to his great plan that we feel the burden, and co-operate in our several spheres.
The cause at this time needs laborers, and while they are being called to enter the vineyard, I remember how, before the ascension of Jesus, he told his disciples to tarry “in Jerusalem,” until they were endued with power from on high. Luke 24: 49. This was to give them success in their work. And while it is now such a solemn and holy calling to God’s ministers, “Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord,” I would ask if it is not as necessary that the lay members should be individually fitted up with a greater baptism into the love of the truth and the spirit of the work?—a getting near to God, a great humbling of ourselves, and searching of heart, and trying of our ways by the aid of his Spirit; getting an agonizing spirit of prayer for help against the powers of darkness, pleading, wrestling, till, Jacoblike, we prevail, our captivity is turned, we are the Lord’s free men and women, and we can say, “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Oh! how willing the Lord is to help us, and how mighty! Is he not the same God that made a way through the Red Sea, the same who delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, the same who has always stood by his truth and vindicated right in all ages?
When I realize the length and breadth of God’s requirements, the mighty help there is for us, the grace that is ready to be bestowed with the seeking, I am overwhelmed with a sense of our dullness, our weak faith, and our feeble love; and a desire so ardent, so longing, is begotten within me that I can say with David, As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Having obtained the necessary fitness, we shall be ready to enter the vineyard to labor as the Lord shall open the way. Different classes, presenting an almost endless variety of phase as to belief and sensibility on the great subject of man’s responsibility and future weal or woe, exist, and the inquiry arises, How shall they be reached? A minister with a good understanding of the truth can enter the desk and give an exposition of the word, it may be with demonstration of the Spirit and power, and so appeal to the understanding of his hearers that they may be convinced of the truth.
A different style of labor falls upon us. We are daily casting an influence for good or evil among those with whom we meet and associate. We are individually justified or condemned by our own words, and when we realize that the effect of our words does not cease with ourselves, we are doubly guilty if they are not well-chosen.
A good example of the truth lived out will be very effectual in removing prejudice where it exists. In presenting these unpopular truths, so dear to us, we may speak a word here, or hand a tract or paper there, which may create an interest and open the way for good to be accomplished. “He that winneth souls is wise.” With a sense of the worth of souls—a love for our neighbor as ourselves—every opportunity will be improved for advancing the cause of truth. Oh! can we not get the same mind in us that was in Jesus, to labor for the lost, the perishing, around us? Brother, sister, will you not, from this moment, bend all your energies in this direction, with much prayer to the Lord of the harvest for wisdom, and that our labor be not in vain?
“’T is sweet to work for Jesus, There’s resting by-and-by.”
A. M. L.
Oswego Co., N. Y.