Quiet Talks on ServiceGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks on Service
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
And the fish get very particular about the sort and shape of the bait.
Some men have taken to fishing wholly with pickles, but with very
unsatisfactory results. The fish nibble, but are seldom landed apparently.
And just a little bit out are fish that never have gotten a suggestion of
a good bite.
There are deeps all around. One might fairly give an inward personal turn
to the word. There are _personal deeps_ that have not yet been sounded.
There are untouched deeps in prayer, in Bible study, and in the winning of
others. There are deeps in acquaintance with Jesus, in purity of life, in
sacrifice and in giving whose bottom no greasy lead has yet touched. "Out
into the deep," comes that quiet intense inner voice of Jesus spoken into
one's innermost heart.
There are the great _deeps in service_ waiting our coming. Roundabout
every church is a fringe of deep, sometimes a deep fringe and broad, of
those practically untouched by the warm message of Jesus; and around every
Christian Association of men and of women. In the heart and on the edges
of every village and town and city unfathomed deeps lie; deeps in a man's
own state, deeps in our land, great untouched deeps in the world.
Wherever there is a man who has not felt the warm side of the story of
Jesus' dying there is a deep. Wherever a group of such can be found is a
deep increased in depth by the number in the group. Wherever the great
crowds are gathered together to whom no word at all has come, neither by
personal touch nor printed page nor any other wise, there is the deepest
deep. With a deep glow in His eyes as He speaks the word, and the
tenderness and softness of deep emotion, and the earnestness of one who
has Himself been in the deep Jesus says anew to us to-day, "out into the
_deep_."
We are to be ambitious in service. Jesus was ambitious. He reached out for
all, those nearest, those farthest. He talked of all nations, of a world.
His follower must have a long reach to keep up. That word ambition has
been much abused. It has been used much in connection with selfish
self-seeking, until that meaning has become almost its whole meaning in
the thinking of many people. But with the purpose dominant in Jesus we can
properly use it in its old literal meaning. Originally it simply meant
going around, being used in the sense of going out among people soliciting
their favor or their votes.
It has the fine vitality of that word "go" in it. That for which a man is
ambitious decides the quality of the word. A pure, holy purpose makes the
intense reaching for it pure and holy too. An intense reaching out to the
farthest reach of the Master's word, that finds expression in the dominant
spirit of the life, in the service, in the giving, the sacrificing, the
praying--this is the true ambition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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