4. The Missionary Witnessing (Acts 1:8)
His!
Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me. John 17:6
It is this aspect of a disciple’s life that is frequently forgotten. We are apt to think of ourselves as our own, of the work as our work. A great point in spiritual nobility has been reached when we can really say, “I am not my own.” It is only the noble nature that can be mastered—an unpalatable truth if we are spiritually stiff-necked and stubborn, refusing to be mastered. The Son of God is the Highest of all, yet the characteristic of His life was obedience. We have to learn that God is not meant for us, it is we who are meant for God. Jesus Christ does satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, but that must never lead to thinking of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost as an Almighty arrangement for satisfying us. “Know ye not that . . . ye are not your own?” It is this realisation that is wrought in us by the Holy Ghost.
His! Does that apply to us? Have we realised that our body is not our own, but His—“the temple of the Holy Ghost”†! Have we realised that our heart and affections are not our own, but His? If so, we shall be careful over inordinate affection. Have we realised that all the ambitions of life are His? We are out for one thing only, for Jesus Christ’s enterprises. That is the inner secret of the missionary—I know that I am His, and that He is carrying on His enterprises through me; I am His possession and He can do as He likes with me.
Each one has the setting of his own difficulties and temptations, and so it is with the missionary. If we cannot live at home as His, we shall find it much more difficult to live in the foreign field as His; we shall be more likely to make things ours than to remain loyal to Him. If we have been “wobblers” at home, we shall be “wobblers” out there. If we have learned to face ourselves with God at home, we shall face ourselves with God out there. But we have to learn to do it, and it is not easy at the beginning. Where he is placed is a matter of indifference to the missionary; if he maintains his contact with God, out of him will flow rivers of living water. We have the idea that we engineer missionary enterprise; but it is the genius of the Holy Spirit that makes us “go.”† God does not do anything with us, only through us; consequently the one thing God estimates in His servants is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ is the only One Who has the right to tell us what it means to be His, and in Luke 14:26-33 He is laying down the conditions of discipleship. These conditions are summed up in one astounding word—“hate.” “If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not . . . [i.e., a hatred of every good thing that divides the heart from loyalty to Jesus], he cannot be My disciple” (rv). Every one of the relationships Jesus mentions may be a competitive relationship. We may prefer to be our mother’s, or our father’s, or our own, and Jesus does not say we cannot be, but He does say—“he cannot he My disciple,” he cannot be one over whom Jesus writes the word “Mine.”
In verses 28-33 Our Lord is not referring to a cost the disciple has to estimate, but stating that He has estimated the cost. Jesus Christ is not less than a man among men, and He has counted the cost; that is why He makes the conditions so stern. The men who say—“Lord, Lord,”† are not the ones Jesus takes on His enterprises; He takes only those men in whom He has done everything, they are the ones upon whom He can rely. Many devote themselves to work for God in whom Jesus Christ has done nothing; consequently they bungle His business, run up the white flag to the prince of this world and compromise with him. Jesus says that the only ones He will take on His building and battling enterprises are those who are devoted to Him because He has altered their disposition.
1. The Missionary Watching (Matthew 26:38)
“Watch with Me”†—with no private point of view of your own; watch entirely with Me. In the early stages of Christian experience, we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him. We do not know how to watch with Jesus in the circumstances of our lives, in the revelation of His word; we have the idea only of His watching with us, answering our problems, helping us. But Jesus says—“Watch with Me.”† How is it possible to watch with One Whom we do not understand? The early disciples did not understand Jesus in the slightest. They had been with Him for three years, they loved Him to the limit of their natural hearts, but they had no idea what He meant when He talked of His Kingdom or of His Cross. Jesus was inscrutable to them on these main points. They could not watch with Him for the simple reason that they did not know what He was after. They could not watch with Him in His Gethsemane, they did not know why He was suffering, and they slept for their own sorrow. Then Jesus gave Himself up, and they all forsook Him, and fled,† and when they saw Him put to death on the cross, their hearts were broken. Then after the Resurrection, Jesus came to them and said—“Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and they learned to watch with Him all the rest of their lives.
The real centre of the disciple’s devotion is watching with Jesus. When once we have learned to watch with Him, the thought of self is not kept down because it is not there to keep down; self-effacement is complete. Self has been effaced by the deliberate giving up to another self in sovereign preference, and the manifestation of the life in the actual whirl of things is—“I am not my own, but His.”
2. The Missionary Waiting (Revelation 3:10)
Because thou hast kept the word of My patience.
This is not the patience of pessimism, nor of exhaustion, but the patience of joyfulness because God reigns. It may be illustrated by likening the saint to a bow and arrow in the hand of God. God is aiming at His mark, and He stretches and strains until the saint says—“I cannot stand any more,” but God does not heed. He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly, and the arrow reaches His mark.
Moses “endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.” The vision of God is the source of the patience of a saint. A man with the vision of God is not devoted simply to a cause or a particular issue, but to God Himself. Our Lord sent no one out on the ground of what He had done for them, but only because they had seen Him, and by the power of His Spirit had perceived Who He was. Nothing can daunt the man who has seen Jesus. The one who has only a personal testimony as to what Jesus can do for him may be daunted; but nothing can turn the man who has seen Him. It takes the endurance which comes from a vision of God to go on without seeing results. We are not here for successful service, but to be faithful. Had Jesus any results? Before we go into work for Him we must learn that the disciple is not above his Master.† We cannot be discouraged if we belong to Him, for it was said of Him—“He shall not fail nor be discouraged.” Discouragement is “disenchanted egotism.” “Things are not happening in the way I expected they would, therefore I am going to give it all up.” To talk like that is a sure sign that we are not possessed by love for Him, but only by love for ourselves. Discouragement always comes when we insist on having our own way.
3. The Missionary Worshipping
. . . worship God in the spirit. (Philippians 3:3)
Circumcision is the Old Testament symbol for New Testament sanctification. To worship God “in the spirit” is not to worship Him sincerely, in the remote part of our nature; but to worship Him by the power of the Spirit He gives to us. The Holy Spirit never becomes our spirit, He quickens our spirit into oneness with God. Worship is the tryst of sacramental identification with God; we deliberately give back to God the best He has given us that we may be identified with Him in it. “I beseech you, . . . present your bodies a living sacrifice, . . . which is your spiritual worship” (rv mg). Worship of God is the sacramental element in a saint’s life. We have to give back to God in worship every blessing He has given to us.
4. The Missionary Witnessing (Acts 1:8)
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses. (rv)
The Holy Ghost is the One Who expounds the nature of Jesus to us. When the Holy Ghost comes in, He does infinitely more than deliver us from sin, He makes us one with our Lord. “My witnesses,” a satisfaction to Jesus wherever He places us. To be a witness means to live a life of unsullied, uncompromising, and unbribed devotion to Jesus. A true witness is one who lets his light shine in works that exhibit the disposition of Jesus. Our Lord makes the one who is a witness His own possession, He becomes responsible for him. We have to be entirely His, to exhibit His Spirit no matter what circumstances we are in. It is extraordinary to watch God alter things. We have to worship God in the difficult circumstances, and when He chooses, He will alter them in two seconds. If we deliberately sign ourselves as “His,” then all that happens is the fulfilment of Our Lord’s own words in Matthew 11:28-29: “Come unto Me . . ., and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”
Christ! I am Christ’s! and let the name suffice you,
Ay, for me too He greatly hath sufficed;
Lo with no winning words I would entice you,
Paul has no honour and no friend but Christ.
Yea, thro’ life, death, thro’ sorrow and thro’ sinning
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed:
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.