The Greatest Need by William A. Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 1, 1915

The Greatest Need

By William A. Spicer

Not for a moment can we settle down with the thought that the balance in our world-wide work is not to be better kept by placing yet larger numbers of laborers in proportion in the foreign fields. Now, above all times, as the work presses on in the older fields which form the base, we are to keep in mind the Saviour's exhortation to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth more laborers into the harvest. The believing prayers of the Lord's children will bring more men and more means into the service for the needy fields beyond.

At the same time, the more the workers are increased, apparently, the greater the need seems in these far fields. Ten workers may do a grand work in a long-neglected country; and where each one of the ten may be laboring, there the openings are made on every side, calling for yet further help. But let the number of workers increase to twenty or thirty, and the openings calling for more help are multiplied proportionately. So the need keeps pressing more imperatively upon us the larger the work grows.

This throws us back upon the fact that the chief thing of all is the power of God attending the preaching of his word. Not by human might, nor by an army, but by the Lord's own Spirit the work is to be done. The matter is well put in the following statement by Dr. Mott, a leading figure in the general missionary movement:—

When I made my first journey round the world, I went home and wrote a book in which I laid great stress upon the need of an increase in the number of foreign missionaries. When I returned from my second tour, I laid stress upon the need of a great army of native workers, sons and daughters of the soil. When I came back from my third extended journey to the East, I was much led to see that I had taken a very superficial view. What we need is not so much an increase in the number of missionaries, not so much a vast army of native workers; what we need is the discovery of the hiding of God's power and the secret of the releasing of that power. We need more workers through whom God shall have his opportunity. Here and there he is accomplishing through one worker what many workers could not accomplish where the hiding of his power is not discovered.

Since then I have found the same thing exemplified all over the home field. God has his ways, and they are not always our ways. One of the most striking passages in the Old Testament is the one representing God's eye searching up and down the world trying to find a man whose heart is right toward him, that he might show his power through that man. The discovery of that secret is the great thing needed all over the world today in our Christian enterprise, the discovery of the secret which enables God to find the object of his quest, that he may realize his consuming desire and show himself strong.

While we pray for more workers and more means unceasingly, we pray also that upon the little band of laborers among the millions in the mission fields there may come the special grace and power of God that will bring great results from feeble efforts. The enormity of the need throws us back upon the One who has infinite help. W. A. S.