Christian life; Free Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English; Young men
Goodness is possible; and not to achieve it is to defeat the purpose
for which we were born into this world. Let us believe in goodness.
Let us learn to love goodness because it is goodness. Let us say, and
live our word, that there are no charges we can pay which we are not
prepared to pay to be, and to do, that which is possible to us--and God
will not fail us. Any man who is putting out all his strength in work
and prayer to build up his higher nature need have no devil-fear that
his strength will not be equal to his day. He may not be able to
choose his circumstances; but he can show that he, and not the
circumstances, is the master. He can offer to the world the living
proof that the triumph of good is possible to him whose power is the
faithful God.
And once more: Because He is faithful who has promised, we may safely
leave the issues of our life in His keeping. If by the help of God we
are trying to do the will of God, nothing else really matters. The
crooked places of to-day will be made straight to-morrow. After all,
it is not more knowledge we need, but more power to use the knowledge
we have. Much of our unrest only means that we want to know more than
the silent God sees fit to tell us. We know enough for the wise
ordering of life; and the highest, holiest thing any of us can do, is
to do the wisest and best we know, in whatever honest sphere
circumstances have placed us. The riddles of the universe, and the
perplexities and heartache which come out of our attempts to reconcile
much that we know and see with the rule of an Almighty, an all-wise and
faithful God--these will be here long after we are gone. We must just
take the Master at His word when He says: "What I do thou knowest not
now; but thou shalt know hereafter."
"We cannot," says a wise teacher, "take up a drop of water, and find in
that drop the flow of the tides, and the soft and then loud music of
calm and storm. To see the ocean we must grasp it in all its rocky
bed, bordered by continents." So before the very present troubles of
life, we cannot see all the government of the faithful God. It has
boundaries wider than these. Human life is but a fraction of the sum
of life. The tides of the mind, the music and the tumult of human
waters, cannot be heard and felt in this drop of existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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