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There are flying vapors that are not the sign of His presence. Every worker for God knows this. Ours “the mighty ordination of the pierced Hands,” but the long months before a missionary has liberty to speak in a new tongue can cause him to slip into a dullness that can cling like a wet mist. Shocks of disillusionment, numbing disappointments, can chill, and continually there may be something like the dropping of ice water, drop by drop, on the warm heart. The enemy sees to that. It is possible to be almost content to offer dead things, nothings, shams,
Dead ashes, husk of corn for wheat—
Lord of our Ordination vow,
We gather round Thy wounded feet,
We see the thorns about Thy brow.
Now by Thy cross and passion, Lord,
Grant us this plea, this sovereign plea:
Save us from choosing peace for sword,
And give us souls to give to Thee.”
Life is a journey; it is a climb; it is also and always a war. The soldier of the Lord of Hosts is always a soldier. He dare not drivel down to any other kind of life. This sounds a rough word, but sometimes roughness helps. When a liquid has got past its boiling temperature, and yet will not boil, if a lead shot or anything with a roughened surface, which will carry down a few minute bubbles of air, be dropped into it, the boiling begins at once.
Apollos the Alexandrian had a spirit that boiled (fervent, to boil, be hot). Alexandria did not then, any more than it does now, encourage fervency of spirit. But there is no place where the soldier of the King of kings need be a simmering weakling. The soldier who simmers, but does not boil, is no soldier. He is a sham. Of all the futile figures on the battlefield he is the most futile.
May God take this true word, this small rough word (like the rough lead shot) and drop it into some heart that “will not boil”; and may the Breath of Life cause the boiling to begin at once. God multiply Apollos.
It is the keen Apollos who most feels the long delays in fruition, as he finds “the exercise of hope a more difficult and expensive duty” than he ever imagined it would be. It is he who is most tempted to discouragement when he sees so many who can look no way but downward, and spend their time raking to themselves the straws, the small sticks and dust of the floor, though there stands One who proffers a crown for the muckrake. The world seems full of muckrakes and of people who diligently use them. Heaven is but as a fable to such, and things here are counted the only things substantial. How can the good seed lodge in hearts so occupied, so dulled? He asks himself this question again and again. And yet he has our Lord’s sure promise that labor in Him is not in vain, the sower shall doubtless return with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Many a sower has thanked God for these two words, “shall doubtless.”