God Opened the Way by Edith Sapp Speedie

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 23, 1902

God Opened the Way

By Edith Sapp Speedie

TREMBLING, I went out with “Christ’s Object Lessons.” That day I took no orders, nor was I more successful the next; but the Lord gave me a place to stay with some kind old people. Near the close of the second day I rapped at a door. A little woman came. I heard the baby crying in the kitchen. “Bring the baby, and while you soothe it, I wish to show you a good little book,” I said. I wish I could tell you how I won that mother’s heart with sympathy for the sick children, and with suggestions concerning their treatment. She urged me to come early next morning to see her husband. He ordered the book, and said that he would sell two more copies to friends.

When I went to deliver the books, they insisted on our taking supper with them — my husband was with me. We accepted their hospitality, and in turn invited them to call on us.

To-day the gentleman called near dinner time. We live with my husband’s mother in a small village six miles from town. She is very much opposed to the truth, and insists that we shall never mention it.

We had no sooner seated ourselves at the table than our guest asked me our reasons for not using meat, tea, and coffee. I gave him our reasons from a health standpoint. “But is there not more to it? Isn’t it your religion? Why do you keep Saturday?” I do not know how he knew we did keep the Sabbath. I thought it might displease mother to enter into religious conversation, so I answered him briefly, and turned the conversation into channels not antagonistic to her belief.

As my husband was absent, I thought the gentleman would depart after dinner, but he sat down with the assurance that he would not go till he knew more about “these things.” I suggested another day in his own home, but he insisted on the present time.

Feeling that God had so directed, I told him about some things in which we differ from other churches. Mother then told him that we were wrong, and that it was as she believed. I quoted the plain “Thus saith the Lord,” and, praise his name, truth triumphed as far as it had opportunity.

After two hours the gentleman went away, and he is going to take Bible readings. He had never heard of true Sabbath keeping or of vegetarianism, but he left fully consenting that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, and hungering for more truth.

O my brethren and sisters, the Lord will open the way before us if we will but start — no matter whether we feel like it or not; we should never be governed by feeling. The Christian worker is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God. The command is “Go,” not, Go if you feel like it. Working for Christ is not a question of feeling, but a question of obedience.

EDITH SAPP SPEEDIE.