The Key to Christian Success.
By S.
That key is found in surrender—not partial, but complete; not of that which we have, but of all that we have and are. The example is set for us in the gift and life of the Son of God. Emptied of all that He had save the love that bound Him to the Father and the human race, relinquishing all that He was save only His Sonship in the house of the Father, He gave Himself to and for the salvation of this prodigal world. Because he had no other ambition than to save man and man’s forfeited home, the tempter had no hold on Him—“found nothing” in Him, and the greatest work of the ages was successfully done. The undertaking was a success because everything else was given up for its accomplishment. Man has been left an example, that he “should walk even as He walked.” Christ walked in that way which led to success. It is not to be supposed that man can take any other way and find success in carrying on the work which Christ commissioned men to do. Success does not lie in opposite directions when carrying on the same work. What was necessary to success in His case is necessary to success in our case. That was surrender. Why is surrender necessary?—“Because the mind of flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be.” Rom. 8:7. God and man can not work together for the accomplishment of God’s purpose while man is at enmity with his Maker. There must be unity of desire and purpose, and the one who is to carry the message must be submissive to the will of the One who has the message to be given. The one who is to use the power must use it in harmony with the will of the One who has the power to bestow, or that power can not be entrusted to him. The one who would follow Christ must not set up standards of his own. Christ has established but one way, and it leads straight to the kingdom of God. Outside of that way is only the great “mystic maze” planned to bewilder and delude and lead to destruction; and yet how many are allowing their feet to be guided into these delusive ways whose end is hid in darkness, where ruin waits. We must be in the channel of God’s working or we can not succeed in His work. Outside of that channel we have only our own feeble efforts. The canal barge will not travel overland. Outside of the canal it is stranded. Just so with us. When we have not surrendered our ways to God’s way we are as helpless as the stranded canal barge so far as efforts at winning heaven are concerned. The tower of Babel was such an effort; but it stopped a long way short of heaven. Smitten of God, it has crumbled back to its earth again; and yet just as impotent efforts are seen to-day on every hand in the attempts of men to gain heaven by ways of their own devising7It can not be done. All such must be surrendered or heaven is lost to us. Paul, living in a generation of philosophers, and educated to the height of scholarship, determined to know nothing in his evangelistic labors but “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He had a way; but he surrendered it when he found it was not God’s way. There are many ways of our own that look pleasing to us. Hew them to the line of God’s counsel, and you will find the process has left nothing of them that is of real advantage to the cause of God. “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” That question is pertinent to this thought. God’s way is the right way; that way which is opposed to His way must necessarily be a wrong way. There is no agreement between these ways; and, as there is not, there can be no harmonious action between those who are taking these opposing ways. We can accomplish nothing for God, and therefore can not be a successful Christian, while opposing Him by refusing to yield to His way. Thus we see that there can be no success for us in the Christian way unless we surrender ourselves to Him without reservation. Whatever we retain to ourselves for our own ends stands in the way of our success in His cause. Paradoxical tho it may seem, in surrendering all, we win all; we capitulate and that makes us victors. Hoarding ourselves and our all to ourselves, we lose all; refusing to surrender, we take our own places among the vanquished. In the complete surrender of self, the complete adoption of God’s ways in place of our own, and the consecration of our all to His cause, lies the key to Christian success. S.