Christian life; Free Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English; Young men
I know with any man the power of evil in my heart; and while it may
come, as it were, in spite of myself, I can determine the question as
to whether it shall stay. It is the vilest heresy of our day to preach
and believe that circumstances can absolve us from our duty; or that
they can prevent us from following the right. The battle is hard, at
times very hard, but what battle is not hard that is worth winning?
Put religion out of the question, and do we find that the prizes of the
world offer us easier terms?
It is the greatness of the Christian religion, that it not only tells
us what it were good to do, but it offers to us the power to do it.
The great teachers of the world have said to their disciples: "Accept
our ideas"; Christ says: "Accept Me." "He makes everything centre in
His Own Personality." And the men who have helped to make what so far
in our human world is grand and glorious, have shown us that Christ's
word is a real word, meaning a real thing.
One who has the right to testify has told us that, when we do the will
of God as if it were our own will, we realize that God is doing our
will as His own. There is a great truth in this. We so often fail
because ours is a broken obedience. We expect God to do His part,
while we keep back part of the price of our own, and what response we
have is the sense of being mocked in ourselves. We have to find out
that we cannot serve two masters. However we fall short in practice,
the intention must be all for God, or it will be none. But let us be
genuine co-workers with Him in this great work of personal
character-building; and we find that we have a power not ourselves, and
infinitely greater than ourselves. Our achievements are not so much a
question of gift, as of dynamic. They are not in the machinery, but in
the driving power.
"How is it"--was a question recently asked concerning one of the most
useful men in the Christian ministry--"that with his obvious
limitations he has accomplished so much?" And the answer was: "Because
he has made it possible for God to use him for all he is worth."
Failure is impossible in the man who can say: "I live, and yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me." We cannot explain the power; but it is
there, and we all may have it by obedience to the conditions through
which it can be given. "I have been down deep in the hell of moral
failure," writes one, "and by the grace of God I have come out of it.
I may not be able to explain His grace to the satisfaction of others;
but will others explain me to my own?" Our lives may be the living
evidences of this power. The world asks for no more; the world will
accept no less. Our day, we are told, has ceased to believe in such
miracles. It were truer to say that it has ceased to believe in
anything else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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