MINISTRY.
BY CARRIE F. JUDD
To obtain great spiritual
blessings for ourselves we must pour out our souls for others. There is a form
of spiritual selfishness which keeps us so conscious of our own needs that, in
seeking spiritual supplies for ourselves, we become almost oblivious of the
needs of others, and forget the apostle’s injunction, “Let no man seek his own,
but every man another’s wealth.”-(I Cor. x:24.)
We often feel justified in this
selfishness by the argument that we cannot help others without first being
filled ourselves. While in one sense this is true, yet as those who walk by
faith and not by sight, we must take by faith our position in Christ, claiming
that He is to us each moment all we need, for in Him are “hid all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge,” and then out of His abundant wealth, which we thus
claim because He has given Himself to
us, we must by faith dispense to others. God tells us in His Word that if we
draw out our soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall our light rise in obscurity
and our darkness be as the noon-day.-(Isa. lviii:10.) Human wisdom would tell us to first fill ourselves before we try to
fill others; Divine wisdom takes her
stand as already filled, by faith in Christ’s fullness, and realizes that
as she gives to others of this hidden wealth it shall be made manifest. The
promise goes on, “An the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy
soul in drought and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden
and like a spring of waters, whose waters fail not.” –(Isa. lviii:11.) Guided, as,
by faith in our Guide, we guide others; satisfied, as, by faith, we satisfy the
afflicted souls around us; made fat, as we give of Christ’s overflowing
fullness to those who seem even less needy than ourselves, until at last we are
no longer conscious of receiving the former, and latter rains moderately, but
our souls become like watered gardens and like springs of never-failing water. Filled continually, as by faith we pour out continually. Beloved, let us in
all our service, in the ministry of prayer as well as in work or exhortation,
be like the Son of Man Who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and
to give His life a ransom for many. Then shall we stand with Him, our great
High Priest, in our office of royal priesthood, “consecrated for evermore.”
***
WAITING
AND GUIDANCE
By
T.C. Upham.
Wait on the Lord, to learn the time
And circumstance
of every deed;
He loves to bow his thought sublime
To those who
wait, and feel their need.
He know the time, He knows the way,
And he alone can
give the light,
Which will not lead our steps astray,
But teach and
guide them in the right.
Oh, then recollection wait,
In calmness look,
till light is given;
And thus thou shall not miss the straight
And narrow way
that leas us to heaven.
-Selected.
