WORKING FOR GOD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 4, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 18.

"WORKING FOR GOD."

UNDER the above head, Dr. H. F. Carpenter, in Messiah's Advocate, truly says:—

Do not mistake us. Working for God means more than working for societies; more, even, than working for church. There is much society work and much church work that entails upon the workers much physical and mental fatigue, and when done there is nothing in it for God because there is no salvation for anybody in it. God's work is a man-saving work. To save a soul from eternal death is the work of God, and we may have a joyful part in it, and perhaps a heart-burdened part in it. Blessed promises there are to inspire our hearts to work for God. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength"—be changed from mortal to immortal strength. They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever.

But promises of future good alone will never enable us to work for God. No one ever yet worked effectually for God who had not first experienced God's work within and upon themselves. Jacob wrought with God in taking murderous hate from the heart of Esau, but Jacob approached his brother with a heart prepared by a mighty work of God in an all-night wrestling for personal blessing. No one person stands before us, in Sacred Writ, as such a worker for God as Paul; but his work for God did not commence till he himself had experienced God's wonderful work in his own behalf and upon his own heart. He could appreciate the divine power which delivered him from physical darkness and restored to him his sight; he could also appreciate that mercy that had delivered him from mental blindness into the clear vision of a "sound mind"; but above all, he prized the joy and the power of the Holy Ghost, with which he was filled at the visit of Ananias. This enduement of power took all the shrink out of him.

Serving God can only follow a conscience purged from dead works.

"We are His workmanship, created in Christ unto good works." Eph. 2:10.

Good works do not precede but follow God's creative work in our hearts.

"It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure." Phil. 2:13.

God's work in us must precede our work for God. How effective the exhortations, the personal entreaties, of a new creature in Christ Jesus! How tender the appeals, how fervent the prayers, of one "filled with the Holy Spirit"!

Those "filled with the Holy Spirit" may not, in these gleaning times, gather multitudes to Christ, but they will reach some fruit on the outermost and topmost branches, while, if strangers to God's in-working, they will reach no one, and possibly hinder the work which others are doing. Do you wish a revival in your district, or in your church? Let God work first in your individual heart, and the joy and power of that work some one will get interested in, and inquire where and how you got it.

Perhaps God did once open and fill a well of living water in your heart, but the Philistines have filled it up, as they filled up the wells which Abraham digged. Let the seed of Abraham help you to clean out the old well, throw the dirt and débris far away, and don't stop till you have digged deep and removed every obstruction to the living flow, and the power to testify, to exhort, and to pray, and to rejoice, shall return to you, and with joy ye shall draw water from the wells of salvation, and others shall be watered by your heart's overflow, and ye shall abound in the work of the Lord.