Be in Earnest | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1863

Be in Earnest.

THAT is, if you are yet in sin and intend, or even hope or wish to be saved. For,

1. God gives no promises, expressed or implied, save to such as are in earnest. He nowhere says—"O ye that dwell at ease in your sins, salvation comes to you." In all his holy word there is not a promise of this sort—not one.

But there are ample promises to those who are truly in earnest. For example: "And ye shall seek me and find me, WHEN ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord." Jer. xxix, 13, 14.

"Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find."

"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."

"Strive [agonize] to enter in at the straight gate; for many shall seek to enter in (when it is too late) and shall not be able."

In all these and many similar words, God himself fervently exhorts you to be in earnest. It is safe to assume that he knows what you need to do to be saved. He understands the difficulties you have to surmount and the degree of energy you must summon to your own aid if you are to succeed.

2. God shows you that you should be none the less in earnest, but really the more so, because he works within you and you are dependent on him for your success.

That tempter who does not seek your salvation has often whispered in your ear—"If you are dependent on God for his holy Spirit, lie still, and let him lift you up to heaven in his own time." But God who really does seek your salvation, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," cries aloud—"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure." His working in you to will and to do, never can supersede, or supplant, or dispense with your own working toward your own salvation. The reasoning in God's plea is that you should work the more earnestly and solemnly, because it is God who worketh in you to prompt and to urge you to both willing and doing. And shall not such a plea avail?

3. Another reason why you should be in earnest is, because you have have to overcome yourself. Your worst adversary is your own heart.

In stating this matter thus, we do not mean to lead your thought to some mysterious, unknown power within that you have never heard from and seem to know nothing about. We think only of your impulses inclinations and passions, which love sin and do not love God and his law. You know that somehow your mind does not incline to seek God. You do not naturally love to come near to him and pray for his gracious presence and for the fuller knowledge of his will that you may do it. Strangely, it may seem even to yourself, something within you holds you back even when you know you had best come. That, dear friend, is what you must overcome, or you surely perish. It is a terrible adversary. Thousands, convicted of their duty as you now are, have been thrown down by it and slain. It has baffled many an honest but too weak endeavor, and thrust down many who were almost saved. This conflict with a proud and selfish will, is fearful. You might "meet a bear robbed of her whelps"—with hope. You might face all the demons from the dark pit below and come off conqueror—and with less peril to your soul than you must encounter in this conflict with your own depraved being. In this struggle your reason and your conscience must, with God's good help, prevail over the powers and impulses of sin—or you are surely lost.

Do not be stumbled because we put this case as one of civil war and rebellion in the town of Man-soul. Paul puts the case thus:—"That which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find not. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."

But the most palpable evidence that you have such an adversary to your salvation is your own conscious experience. You have seen your duty more than once and thought you would do it; but you did not. You resolved; but you failed to do. Again you saw your danger and your guilt; again you made an effort and again you failed. That old enemy was still too strong and he triumphed.

And what is to be learned by all these failures? This:—that you must put forth a more determined effort; that you must really set yourself to ascertain what God would have you be and do, and then bend your efforts in precisely that direction. You must study the gospel plan to learn from it what God has done for your salvation and what remains for you to do. So studying, you will readily see that God does not ask you to make an atonement by sacrifice for your own sins; that made by Christ is perfect. He asks of you no more of that sort;—but only that you gratefully and with contrite heart, accept of that atonement. He does ask you to put away your sins and to set your heart henceforth on doing all his will. And he asks of you a grateful trust in his own mercy. Toward these things should your best endeavors be directed.

4. Need we urge you further to be in earnest because your soul is worth saving? It is too precious that you should consent to let it be lost. You cannot yet adequately measure the great depth of the ruin when one soul goes down to perdition. O it is a fearful doom to be an outcast from God and from all the pure and the holy! It is awful to lose heaven and its promised bliss forever! Can you afford to be lost?