Quiet Talks with World WinnersGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks with World Winners
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
"The day is long, and the day is hard;
We are tired of the march and of keeping guard;
Tired of the sense of a fight to be won,
Of days to live through, and of work to be done;
Tired of ourselves and of being alone:
Yet all the while, did we only see,
<i>We walk in the Lord's own company.</i>
We fight, but 'tis He who nerves our arm;
He turns the arrows that else might harm,
And out of the storm He brings a calm;
And the work that we count so hard to do,
He makes it easy, for He works, too:
And the days that seem long to live are His--
bit of His bright eternities--and close to our need
His helping is."[26]
<u>The Trinity of Service.</u>
Now, we want to mark keenly that <i>full</i> power depends upon three things.
There is a trinity of service, a human-divine trinity. The full results
can come only through its working. The ideal winner of men needs to
believe thoroughly in this trinity.
First of all is <i>the message</i>. There needs to be a clear understanding of
the Gospel. That is the winner's message. That is the direct thing he uses
in approaching and laying siege to some man's heart. It is a simple
message, but very often it is grasped only partly by those who tell it.
That message needs to be understood clearly and fully by the man who would
have the greatest power in winning men. From its first plain teaching
about sin, on to the terrible results that sin left to itself works out;
through the blessed teaching of love as shown most in the sacrifice for
sin which Jesus made on the cross; the need of a clean cutting with sin,
and clear-out surrender to Jesus as Saviour and Master; the work of the
Holy Spirit in one's heart; and then the climax of service out among
men--this simple message needs to be grasped fully and clearly. This is
the first great essential hi the trinity of service.
There is a second thing, yet more important, that must go with this first.
And that is <i>a man who embodies the message</i> in himself. It isn't enough
to know the story of the Gospel, nor to tell it. It must be <i>lived</i>. That
is the best telling of it. The man must be a living illustration of the
truth he is telling. He may be conscious of not illustrating it as he
should. The earnest man is never aware that he is as good an illustration
of it as he is. He may think himself a poor illustration. He is quite apt
to. But he is yet more apt not to be thinking of that side as he attempts
to win men. He will be all taken up with Jesus, and with getting men to
know Him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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