Children to Be Missionaries
Children can be acceptable missionary workers in the home and in the church. God desires them to be taught that they are in this world for useful service, not merely for play. In the home they can be trained to do missionary work that will prepare them for wider spheres of usefulness. Parents, help your children to fulfil God's purpose for them. Train them to be an honor to the One who died to gain for them eternal life in the kingdom of glory. Teach them that God has a part for them in his great work. The Lord will bless them as they work for him. They can be his helping hand. As they do their work in the home with fidelity, learning to be burden-bearers, they are working with Christ for the formation of Christlike characters.
Let parents and children work earnestly to help others. Those whom they help will be led by their example to help still others. Thus the good work will deepen and broaden. Higher education is that education which leads men and women to be laborers together with God, practising self-denial and self-sacrifice. Those with such an education will be acknowledged by God in the heavenly courts, in the presence of Christ and the angels.
Willing to Spend and Be Spent
Every true servant of God is willing to spend and be spent for the sake of others. "He that loveth his life shall lose it," Christ says; "and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." By earnest efforts to help wherever help is needed, he shows his love for God and his fellow beings. He may lose his life in service; but when Christ comes to gather his jewels to himself, he will find it again.
God has provided for every one pleasure that may be enjoyed by rich and poor alike,--the pleasure found in cultivating pureness of thought and unselfishness of action, the pleasure that comes from speaking sympathizing words and doing kindly deeds. In order to find this pleasure, it is not necessary to have a supply of ready money. Through those who perform such service, the light of Christ shines to brighten lives darkened by many shadows.
Christ draws aside the veil that conceals from our view the glory of God, and reveals him, not in a state of silence and idleness, but surrounded by ten thousand times ten thousands of the heavenly host, every one awaiting his orders, waiting to reveal the God of heaven in communication with every part of his kingdom. The Lord is bound up with the interests of the human family. He listens to every cry of oppression, observes every individual action, approving every deed of mercy and condemning every act of oppression. He sets his angels at work to relieve the oppressed, the discouraged, the suffering. He sends his message of mercy to tempted ones. He gives men opportunities to acknowledge him, that he may teach them how to withstand the evil of the world, and perfect Christlike characters.
There must be no pretense in the lives of those who have so sacred and solemn a message as we have been given to bear. The world is watching Seventh-day Adventists, because it knows something of their beliefs and of the high standard they have; and when it sees those who do not live up to their profession, it points at them with scorn. God's people should now make mighty intercession to him for help. It is the privilege of every believer, first to talk with God, and then, as God's mouthpiece, to talk with others. In order that we may have something to impart, we must daily receive light and blessing. Men and women who commune with God, who have an abiding Christ, who co-operate with holy angels, are needed at this time. The cause needs those who have power to draw with Christ, power to express the love of God. With wonderful, ennobling grace the Lord sanctifies the humble petitioner, giving him power to perform the most difficult duties. All that is undertaken is done as to the Lord, and this elevates and sanctifies the lowliest calling. It invests with new dignity every word and act, and links the humblest worker, the poorest of God's servants, with the highest of the angels in the heavenly courts.
Let Your Light So Shine Before Men
The enemy is just as perseveringly at work now as he was before the flood. By the use of various enterprises and inventions he is diligently working to keep the minds of men engrossed in the things of this world. He is employing all his ingenuity to lead men to act foolishly, to keep them absorbed in commercial enterprises, and thus to imperil their hope of eternal life. He devises the inventions that imperil human life. Under his leadership, men carry through that which he devises. They become so absorbed in the pursuit of wealth and worldly power that they give no heed to a "Thus saith the Lord."
Satan exults as he sees that he is successful in keeping minds from a consideration of the solemn, important matters that have to do with eternal life. He seeks to crowd the thought of God out of the mind, and to put worldliness and commercialism in its place. He desires to keep the world in darkness. It is his studied purpose to lead men to forget God and heaven, to bring all the souls that he can under his own jurisdiction. And to this end he brings forward enterprises and inventions that will so occupy men's attention that they will have no time to think of heavenly things.
The people of God must now awake and do their neglected work. Into our planning for this work, we must put all the powers of the mind. We should spare no effort to present the truth as it is in Jesus, so simply and yet so forcibly that minds will be strongly impressed. We must plan to work in a way that will consume as little means as possible; for the work must extend into the regions beyond.
Those who have received the light of truth are to speak the truth, and pray the truth, and live the truth. They are not to depart from the Word of God, as some are doing, in order to follow their own devisings. The Word that the Lord has given is spirit and life, and works for the saving of souls. It is the only Word in which we may safely trust.
Our ministers are not to permit their minds and their means to be converted into commercial enterprises. They are to use all that they have and are in the Lord's service. They are not to work in accordance with their individual impressions, striking out into new lines, in accordance with strange human ideas. This has been the danger in the past. The mind of man deviseth many things. Unless the mind of the worker is sanctified, he will follow another leader instead of Christ, showing a preference for the methods that the enemy has devised. He will be led to try to show his own superiority.
Every capability that God has given us we are to use in letting the light of truth shine forth. The cities are to be warned. The time of the end is near. We can see that the signs of Christ's coming are rapidly fulfilling. "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor: other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors."
Read the whole of the fourth chapter of John, and seek the Lord with earnest prayer. Perilous times are upon us. It does not become any man or woman to be regardless of the working of the Holy Spirit upon human hearts.
"And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me; and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.
"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those which had the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan."