Secret Power; or, The Secret of Success in Christian Life and WorkMoody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Secret Power; or, The Secret of Success in Christian Life and Work
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Baptism in the Holy Spirit; Christian life; Holy Spirit
Love is forbearance; and what we want is to get this spirit of
criticism and fault finding out of the Church and out of our hearts
and let each one of us live as if we had to answer for ourselves, and
not for the community, at the last day. If we are living according to
the 13th chapter of Corinthians, we will not be all the time finding
fault with other people. "Love suffereth long, and is kind." Love
forgets itself, and don't dwell upon itself. The woman who came to
Christ with that alabaster box, I venture to say, never thought of
herself. Little did she know what an act she was performing. It was
just her love for the Master. She forgot the surroundings, she forgot
everything else that was there; she broke that box and poured the
ointment upon Him, and filled the house with its odor. The act, as a
memorial, has come down these 1800 years. It is right here--the
perfume of that box is in the world today. That ointment was worth $40
or $50; no small sum of those days for a poor woman. Judas sold the
Son of God for about $15 or $20. But what this woman gave to Christ
was everything that she had, and she became so occupied with Jesus
Christ that she didn't think what people were going to say. So when we
act with a single eye for the glory of our Lord, not finding fault
with everything about us, but doing what we can in the power of this
love, then will our deeds for God speak, and the world will
acknowledge that we have been with Jesus, and that this glorious love
has been shed abroad in our hearts.
If we don't love the Church of God, I am afraid it won't do us much
good; if we don't love the blessed Bible, it will not do us much good.
What we want, then, is to have love for Christ, to have love for His
word, and to have love for the Church of God, and when we have love,
and are living in that spirit, we will not be in the spirit of finding
fault and working mischief.
AFTER LOVE, WHAT?
After love comes peace. I have before remarked, a great many people
are trying to make peace. But that has already been done. God has not
left it for us to do; all that we have to do is to enter into it. It
is a condition, and instead of our trying to make peace and to work
for peace, we want to cease all that, and sweetly enter into peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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