“Be Ye Steadfast, Unmovable.”
By Spurgeon
PERSEVERANCE is at once the crown and cross of service. It is very easy to preach for a little while, but I can assure you that preaching to a congregation year after year involves no little toil; yet we are bound to be steadfast in this ministry. A spurt, a leap, a bound—these are easy, but to press on continually is the difficulty. Have you taken a class in Sabbath-school? The novelty of it may carry them through a month or two; but, dear friend, be steadfast, and hold on year after year, for therein will lie your honor and success. If you should be discouraged because you meet with no present success, yet persevere, yea, endure to the end. If God has given you any work to do, it is yours to press forward in it, whether you prosper in it or not. The negro said, you remember, that if God bade him jump through a wall, whether he could go through it or not was no business of his. “Here I go,” says he, “right at it.” We may rest assured that the Lord never did command us to leap through a wall without causing it to give way, when our faith brought us to the test. We have to obey the precept, and leave the consequences. If God says, “Do it,” the command is both the warrant for our act and the security for our being aided with all necessary help. Noah preached for one hundred and twenty years, and when his time of warning ministry was over, where were his converts? He may have had a great many, but they were all dead and buried; and with the exception of himself and family, after one hundred and twenty years’ ministry, there remained not one that God would preserve alive; and into the ark he went, the grandest unsuccessful preacher that ever lived, faithful unto death, to be rewarded of God as much as if he had induced half the world to flee from the wrath to come. Let us, therefore, remain steadfast in doctrine, in attainment, and in labor. If ever there was a period in the Christian church when professors needed to be exhorted to be “steadfast, unmovable,” it is just now, for the foundation is removed and all things are out of course. Men remove the old landmarks, they break down the pillars of the house. All things reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and only He who keepeth the feet of the saints can preserve our uprightness. I see the tackling loosed and the mast unstrengthened, and the brave vessel of the church is in an evil case. Many have left their moorings and are drifting hither and thither, their helmsmen all amazed. No longer does the squadron of the Lord sail in order of battle, but the lines are broken and the vessel yields to tossings of winds and waves. Alas! that it should be so. Oh! where is He that trod the sea? the Pilot of the Galilean lake? I see him walking the waters, and he cries to us who still stand true to the Lord, the one faith, and the one baptism, “Be ye steadfast, unmovable.”—Spurgeon.