Embracing Your Unique Role in God's Service

The first thing is to get every man into his proper place, the next thing is for every man to have a good spirit in his present place so as to occupy it worthily. I will suppose dear friends that in the providence of God you are in your place and that by the direction of God's spirit you have also sought and found the precise form of usefulness in which you ought to exercise yourself. [00:58:38]

You have been so discouraged that you have excused yourself for inaction and your inaction has grown into indolence. If a man under the notion that he could not lift his right hand constantly kept it still, I should not wonder if after weeks and months it would become a matter of fact that he had not the power to use it. [00:55:59]

If by sickness you are detained at home, if for any other reason such as age or infirmity you are not able to enter into actual service, yet if you are a true soldier and would fight if you could and your heart is in it, you shall share even with the best and bravest of those who clad in the panoply of God encounter and grapple with the adversary. [00:37:57]

Do you not think that a mother nursing her baby is serving God? Do you not think that men and women going about their daily toil with patient industry discharging the duties of domestic life are serving God? If you think rightly you will understand that they are, the servants sweeping the room, the mistress preparing the meal, the workman driving a nail, the merchant casting up his ledger. [00:11:36]

If you have preached or taught or done work for Christ with little success until now do not infer that you will always be unsuccessful. Regret the lack of prosperity but do not relinquish the labor of seeking it. You may reasonably be sorrowful but you have no right to despair. [00:35:05]

You must not infer that therefore you are not saved, for if you were to be among the chief of Christian workers it would not prove that you were certainly a child of God. Do not fret then because you are shut out from the cheerful activities in which others share, for as long as your name is written in heaven, and your heart truly follows after the Lord you shall have an abundant recompense at the last great day. [00:08:18]

I have sometimes been called to visit bedridden persons who have been unable to rise for many many years and it has been within my knowledge that their usefulness has extended over whole parishes. They have been known as poor pious women or as experienced Christian men, and many have gone to visit them. [00:10:13]

If you cannot get force by the weight of the ball get it by the velocity with which it travels. A little man with one talent all ablaze may become a perfect nuisance to the devil and a champion for Christ, as for that great divine with his five talents who marches on so sleepily, Satan can always over march him and win the day. [00:23:58]

If you encounter opposition take it as a good sign. When our young men go to a provincial town to preach, and I want to know how they are getting on, after listening to their story I ask, has somebody slandered you yet? Do the newspapers denounce you as a fool? If they say no, I conclude that they are not getting on much. [00:27:24]

If you have only nine pence, make it nimble, and you will get as much profit out of a nimble nine prince as another out of a lazy crown. Activity often makes up for a lack of ability. If you cannot get force by the weight of the ball get it by the velocity with which it travels. [00:23:03]

If you have plowed and if you have sowed, though there should be no harvest you are clear and accepted. Did it never strike you that you may be now employed in breaking up ground and preparing the soil from which other laborers who come after you will reap very plentifully? [00:37:43]

I want you to have that spirit and to say I will live for Christ while I am young I will live for him till I die, and if I die a painful death I will pray to die for him and warm the hearts of my brethren. [00:44:37]