Courage in the Lord by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 21, 1873

Courage in the Lord.

By James White

SEVERAL years since, while attending a meeting at Wolcott, Vt., we were suffering great depression of spirits. Our aged brother, Eld. A. Stone, was present, and in the course of remarks, he seemed to warm up somewhat, and several times repeated these words: “Courage in the Lord! Courage in the Lord, brethren! Courage in the Lord!” And every time he repeated these good words, a greater degree of freedom came into the meeting, especially to our depressed feelings.

Now, this is just what is needed by all our people, and especially by all our preachers. Some of our young men have considerable courage, but not fully in the Lord. These will soon faint, unless they learn to put their trust in God.

But there are those who seem almost destitute of that abiding courage necessary to sustain them under trying circumstances. Hence they are inclined to vacillate according to changing circumstances. Sometimes they are up, and much of the time they are down. These need to draw very near to the Lord, and learn, and feel, and know, the source of their strength.

But what is most to be deplored, is a habit of sadly and murmuringly thinking over, and talking over, discouragements. Said John Wesley, “If you would have faith, talk faith.” On the other hand, those who cherish and talk doubt and darkness will have enough of both. Those who cherish a grateful, thankful spirit will ever feel that goodness and mercy have followed them all the days of their life, and that the Lord is all about them, with his providential hands full of gracious blessings.

Want of true faith, discouragement and murmuring and complaining is the great temptation and sin of our time. We regret that this spirit obtained a strong hold upon us, though it was at a time when we were nearly forsaken by fellow-laborers while standing under a three-fold burden at head-quarters, until health failed. Our feebleness and grief, we thought a sufficient excuse for yielding to discouragements. What a mistake! What a trick of Satan! God would have sustained in a cheerful performance of duty. Or it would have been better to have quit, if the Office had been closed, the crisis come sooner, and our people been aroused to come to our help. Whatever might have occurred, a spirit of despondent complaining was a sin in the sight of Heaven.

Sometimes we have felt that our brethren did not appreciate our past labors, which have brought prosperity and increase to our institutions at Battle Creek, and that they were not disposed to cheerfully remunerate us in a proper way for those efforts made at the sacrifice of health. And when these feelings have taken strong hold of us, they have made us very unhappy. But God is giving us the victory over these thoughts and feelings. We are done, and have closed up everything of this kind, and are becoming very happy and hopeful in God.

And we have become alarmed at what we have seen in some of our young ministers. Their state of mind has led us to search closely, and we have become thoroughly disgusted with anything like the martyr spirit, and a childish complaining and murmuring while professing to be the adopted children of God, and the called and chosen servants of Jesus Christ.

When young men, in comparatively good health, whom the cause of present truth, only half a score of years since, took from poverty and obscurity, and has guided them, and has nourished and cherished them, until they have a good ministerial education and reputation, a good library, and one, or two, or more, thousand dollars of property which they have saved from their yearly payments from the S. B. treasury, begin to think that the Lord and his cause are indebted to them, turn martyrs and talk of their labors, privations, and sacrifices, and all this while professing to preach the last merciful message to sinful man, and that they are soon to exchange the Christian warrior’s cross for the crown of glory, it is time for alarm for the honor and cause of God.

Unless those of us who have been more or less in this way of thinking and feeling can get over it, and bring our minds to the happy point of consecration enjoyed by the apostles, we had better quit, and not bring the blessed Lord and his dear cause any more in debt to us. Paul says, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.” “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” Phil. 3: 8, 10, 11.

Happy Paul! And the servants of God in our time may be as happy when they bring their minds to that state of consecration set forth in the lives and teachings of Christ’s first ministers. Then they will have courage in the Lord, and power in presenting the truths of God’s word for our time. They will then feel and know by happy experience that God is their Father, Christ their elder brother and Saviour, the Holy Spirit their sanctifier, the angels of God their ministering spirits, and the inheritance of the saints in light their eternal reward and home. With these facts before them, and this prize in view, they will “glory in tribulation,” Rom. 5: 3, and enjoy a constant flow of the “peace of God which passeth all understanding.” Phil. 4: 7.

Thank God, his servants are not left orphans. He lives and reigns. And Christ holds those soul-inspiring words good in 1873, though part of the great commission uttered eighteen centuries ago. “And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Matt. 28: 20. Brethren in the ministry, let us give the Lord room in our hearts, and faith, and lives, and ministry, and take him along with us. He waits to respond to our acts of obedience and faith. The reason why the Lord does no more for his people, is that they do not give him a chance to respond to their acts of faith.

When Fred Douglass was speaking before a crowded house in Boston in a desponding manner about the time of the passing of the fugitive-slave bill, a colored woman, known all over our country as Aunt Sojourner Truth, cried out with a voice still inspired with faith and hope of the emancipation of her race, “Fred! Is God dead?” The effect was electrifying. Both Fred and Sojourner have lived to see the chains fall.

Brethren in the ministry, we can never bring the Lord and his cause in debt to us. Christ has done a thousand times more for us than we can ever do for him in return. Hardly can the most devoted minister pay the debt he owes to a world of sinners, much less to his adorable Redeemer. Says Paul, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” Rom. 1: 14. The gospel of Jesus Christ had been freely given to Paul. It was a priceless gift. It had been committed to him to give to the world. In this way, the Lord had made the apostle a debtor to both Greeks and Barbarians, both to the wise and unwise. Said Christ to the twelve, “Freely ye have received, freely give.” And if we are so happy as to reach the home of the redeemed, we shall never think of talking over what we have done and suffered here. Should we try to call our toils and trials up, they would at once be lost sight of as our eyes would behold the glory, and our ears hear, and our tongues join, the universal song of “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to redeem us.”

Brethren, this is our place and time of toil, sacrifice, and to suffer the loss of all things. The reward is over on the immortal shore. But those of us who cannot get above the feeling that we have done so much that the cause of God is badly indebted to us, had better quit. God does not require any one to labor to that degree, and to fill positions, that will ruin health. Neither does he require his servants to labor at any great length of time where their labors are not appreciated. It is their duty to labor where they can do the greatest amount of good. Labor that is not appreciated cannot do the most good. “When they persecute you in one city, flee to another,” instead of stopping and complaining over being ill treated.

Hear again triumphant Paul:—

“We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain (for he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation); giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed; but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” 2 Cor. 6: 1–10.

The faint-hearted, childish, complaining minister, who has put on the martyr spirit, should read the above every sixty minutes, until healthy action takes place. And again, hear Paul:—

“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Rom. 8: 31, 32, 35–39.

Happy, happy apostle of Jesus Christ! While suffering the loss of all things that he might win Christ, the powers of earth and hell combined could not separate him from the love of God in Christ. In this happy frame of mind, supported and illuminated by that heavenly glory that responds to triumphant faith, Paul viewed all his toils, sorrows, and afflictions light, and the final reward of ponderous weight. Hear him:—

“For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause, we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Cor. 4: 5–18.

Those who feel that they have brought the cause into debt to them, and have mental sufferings over their past successful labors, toils, privations, and sacrifices, should read the last-quoted, all-healing remedy once in thirty minutes, and repent until symptoms are decidedly favorable. What kept the great apostle’s spirits in a healthy condition is explained in verse 18 of this all-restoring panacea. “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” Those who walk by sight, and look for their reward in this life, and dwell upon their toils and sacrifices, and measure their work by what appears in this world, will probably decide that it hardly pays to be a minister of Jesus Christ. But those who walk by faith will view these matters as Paul viewed them, and will bear cheerful testimony with him that our “light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Triumphant gospel faith will reach up through the clouds and darkness, and lay hold of the unseen glories of the eternal world, and bring them, in anticipation, down all around the true servant of Jesus Christ.

It was a life of cheerful obedience, happy sacrifice, and suffering for his Master, and humble boldness for the right, that made Paul’s perilous ministry a happy one, and enabled him to say, at its close, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” 2 Tim. 4: 7, 8. And whoever may

meet the apostle in the kingdom of glory, wearing his crown of righteousness—a badge of his righteous ministry—and ask him about his sacrifices, labors, and sufferings here, may hear him say that eternity is too short to spend a moment over such trifles, and see him the next moment casting his righteous crown at the feet of his Redeemer, and hear him join the happy victors, shouting, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to redeem us.” “Courage in the Lord, brethren, courage in the Lord.” J. W.