Our Duty in Meeting by M. J. Bahler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 18, 1873

Our Duty in Meeting.

By M. J. Bahler

We heed the injunction, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together,” but the remainder of the text we seem to have forgotten. I think it says something about speaking to each other in regard to our hope of the approaching day of triumph and deliverance, or exhorting one another. Please get your Bible, and study Heb. 10:25.

Some of us seem to think that, when we have taken the trouble to get to meeting and taken our seat among the worshipers, our duty is done; and so the meeting progresses, and some timid, shrinking ones make our silence an excuse for them to sit still, and the meeting drags, and the Spirit of the Lord is grieved, and our souls become more barren than they were before, and we go to our homes with less strength to meet the perplexities and temptations of life. And our brethren go home saddened because of our silence.

Couldn’t do any good if you did speak? How do you know? Satan told you that; he knew you would be weaker and fall an easier prey to him if you kept silent in the assembly of the saints. He knows that those who express a determination to serve the Lord are strengthened by that expression, provided it comes from the heart; and he knew, too, that your testimony would cheer others, if you said only, “I am striving to be a child of God.” And he knows, too, that so long as he can keep your tongue silent from God’s service, you are pretty surely in his power for the eternity beyond. Satan knows that angels are saddened and God’s work hindered by your silence. You cannot see how you hinder God’s work? No! you will not be apt to see it until you break away and speak for the Lord, whether you feel like it or not. I do not care if you cannot think of one word to say that you think would encourage, rise up, and the Lord will give you something to say. Perhaps you will say as I did once, that you are determined not to act from feeling, but from principle, and then experience such a sweet blessing from the Lord that you will want to rise again and tell how the Lord has encouraged your heart, and taken away your dark feelings and thoughts because you did not yield to feeling, and sit still, and as you go from such an experience you will see how, by yielding to such feelings, you have hindered the work of God in your own heart if nowhere else. Instead of going away from meeting with a shadow on your heart and brow, to cast the same over all you meet, you will go with sunlight flooding your entire being, the sweet sunlight that comes from a sense of duty done; and all you meet will be made the happier by your happiness, and then you will grow in grace, and wisdom, and patience, and by-and-by you will be a perfect overcomer.

But so long as you yield to Satan in this, speak no word for the Saviour, your influence is deadening, and discouraging to others, and you gain no strength. The victories you gain are so few that you sit down completely discouraged, overcome. Remember that your duty at the house of God remains undone, and you are, consequently, an unfaithful servant, so long as you speak not for the Master. M. J. BAHLER.