CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
Service
There is, perhaps, no part of Christian experience where a greater change is known upon entering into this life hid with Christ in God than in the matter of service.
In all the ordinary forms of Christian life, service is apt to have more or less of bondage in it. That is, it is done purely as a matter of duty and often as a trial and a cross. Certain things, which at the first may have been a joy and a delight, become after a while weary tasks, performed faithfully, perhaps, but with much secret disinclination and many confessed or unconfessed wishes that they need not be done at all, or at least that they need not be done so often. The soul finds itself asking, instead of the “May I?” of love, the “Must I?” of duty. The yoke, which was at first easy, begins to gall, and the burden feels heavy instead of light.
One dear Christian expressed it once to me in this way: “When I was first converted,” she said, “I was so full of joy and love that I was only too glad and thankful to be allowed to do anything for my Lord, and I eagerly entered every open door. But after a while, as my early joy faded away, and my love burned less fervently, I began to wish I had not been quite so eager; for I found myself involved in lines of service that were gradually becoming very distasteful and burdensome to me. Since I had begun them, I could not very well give them up without provoking much talk, and yet I longed to do so increasingly. I was expected to visit the sick and pray beside their beds. I was expected to attend prayer meetings and speak at them. I was expected, in short, to be always ready for every effort in Christian work, and the sense of these expectations bowed me down continually. At last it became so unspeakably burdensome to me to live the sort of Christian life I had entered upon, and was expected by all around me to live, that I felt as if any kind of manual labor would have been easier. And I would have infinitely preferred scrubbing all day on my hands and knees to being compelled to go through the treadmill of my daily Christian work.” Does this give a vivid picture of some of your own experiences, dear Christian? Have you never gone to your work as a slave to his daily task, believing it to be your duty and that therefore you must do it, but rebounding like an India rubber ball back into your real interests and pleasures the moment your work was over?
Or, if this does not describe your case, perhaps another picture will. You do love your work in the abstract, but in the doing of it you find so many cares and responsibilities connected with it and feel so many misgivings and doubts as to your own capacity or fitness that it becomes a very heavy burden, and you go to it bowed down and weary before the labor has even begun. Then also you are continually distressing yourself about the results of your work. Now, from all these forms of bondage the soul that enters fully into the blessed life of faith is entirely delivered. Service of any sort becomes delightful to it because, having surrendered its will into the keeping of the Lord, He works in it to will and to do of His good pleasure, and the soul finds itself really wanting to do the things God wants it to do. It is always very pleasant to do the things we want to do, let them be ever so difficult of accomplishment or involve ever so much of bodily weariness. If a man’s will is really set on a thing, he regards with a sublime indifference the obstacles that lie in the way of his reaching it and laughs to himself at the idea of any opposition or difficulties hindering him. Many men have scorned the thought of any “cross” connected with it! It is all in the way we look at things. What we need in the Christian life is to get believers to want to do God’s will as much as other people want to do their own will. It is what God intended for us, what He has promised. In describing the new covenant in Hebrews 8:6–13, He says, “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.” This can mean nothing but that we shall love His law, for anything written in our hearts we must love. “And putting it into our mind” is surely the same as God working in us to “will and to do of his good pleasure,” and means that we shall will what God wills and shall obey His sweet commands, not because it is our duty to do so, but because we ourselves want to do what He wants us to do.
And we, who are by nature a stiff-necked people, always rebel more or less against a law from outside of us while we joyfully embrace the same law springing up within.
God’s way of working, therefore, is to get possession of the inside of a man, to take the control and management of his will, and to work it for him. If you are in bondage in the matter of service, you need to put your will over completely into the hands of your Lord, surrendering to Him the entire control of it. In one case, a lady had been for years rebelling fearfully against a little act of service that she knew was right but which she hated. I saw her, out of the depths of despair, and without any feeling whatever, give her will in that matter up into the hands of her Lord and begin to say to Him, “Thy will be done; Thy will be done!” And in one short hour, that very thing began to look sweet and precious to her.
It is wonderful what miracles God works in wills that are utterly surrendered to Him. Also there is deliverance in the wonderful life of faith. For in this life no burdens are carried, no anxieties felt. The Lord is our burden-bearer, and upon Him we must lay off every care. He says, in effect, “Be careful for nothing, but make your requests known to Me, and I will attend to them all.” Be careful for nothing, He says, not even your service. Above all, I should think, our service, because we know ourselves to be so utterly helpless in regard to it, that, even if we were careful, it would not amount to anything. What have we to do with thinking whether we are fit or not? The Master Workman surely has a right to use any tool He pleases for His own work, and it is plainly not the business of the tool to decide whether it is the right one to be used or not. He knows, and if He chooses to use us, of course we must be fit. And in truth, if we only knew it, our chief fitness is in our utter helplessness. His strength is made perfect, not in our strength, but in our weakness. Our strength is only a hindrance.
It is no wonder that Paul could say, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” If the work is His, the responsibility is His also, and we have no room left for worrying about results. The most effectual workers I know are those who do not feel the least care or anxiety about their work, but who commit it all to their dear Master, and, asking Him to guide them moment by moment in reference to it, trust Him implicitly for each moment’s needed supplies of wisdom and of strength.
There are one or two other bonds in service from which this life of trust delivers us. We find out that no one individual is responsible for all the work in the world, but only for a small share. Our duty ceases to be universal and becomes personal and individual. The Master does not say to us, “Go and do everything,” but He marks out a special path for each of us and gives to each one of us a special duty. There are “diversities of gifts” in the kingdom of God, and these gifts are divided to “every man according to his several ability.” I may have five talents or two or only one. I may be called to do twenty things or only one. My responsibility is simply to do that which I am called to do and nothing more. “The steps of a good man are ordered of the LORD,” not his way only, but each separate step in that way.
Once a young Christian who, because she had been sent to speak a message to one soul whom she met while on a walk, supposed it was a perpetual obligation and thought she must speak to everyone she met on her walks about their souls. This was of course impossible, and as a consequence she was soon in hopeless bondage about it. She became absolutely afraid to go outside of her own door and lived in perpetual condemnation. At last this friend told her just to put herself under the Lord’s personal guidance as to her work and trust Him to point out to her each particular person to whom He would have her speak, assuring her that He never puts forth His own sheep without going before them and making a way for them Himself. She followed this advice and laid the burden of her work on the Lord, and the result was a happy pathway of daily guidance in which she was led into much blessed work for her Master and was able to do it all without a care or a burden because He led her out and prepared the way before her.
Years ago I came across this sentence in an old book: “Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self-reflective acts of any kind, whether of self-congratulation or of self-despair. Forget the things that are behind the moment they are past, leaving them with God.” When the temptation comes, as it mostly does to every worker after the performance of any service, to indulge in these reflections, either of one sort or the other, I turn from them at once and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with the Lord to overrule the mistakes and to bless it as He chooses. To sum it all up, then, what is needed for happy and effectual service is simply to put your work into the Lord’s hands and leave it there. Even in the midst of a life of ceaseless activity, you shall “find rest to your soul.”
Be also yielded unto Him as “instruments of righteousness,” to be used by Him as He pleases!