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Steps to Christ
in our creation that life can be a blessing to us.
If you will go to work as Christ designs that His disciples shall,
and win souls for Him, you will feel the need of a deeper experience
and a greater knowledge in divine things, and will hunger and thirst
after righteousness. You will plead with God, and your faith will be
strengthened, and your soul will drink deeper drafts at the well of
salvation. Encountering opposition and trials will drive you to the
Bible and prayer. You will grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ,
and will develop a rich experience.
The spirit of unselfish labor for others gives depth, stability, and
Christlike loveliness to the character, and brings peace and happiness
to its possessor. The aspirations are elevated. There is no room for
sloth or selfishness. Those who thus exercise the Christian graces will
grow and will become strong to work for God. They will have clear
spiritual perceptions, a steady, growing faith, and an increased power
in prayer. The Spirit of God, moving upon their spirit, calls forth the
sacred harmonies of the soul in answer to the divine touch. Those who
thus devote themselves to unselfish effort for the good of others are
most surely working out their own salvation.
The only way to grow in grace is to be disinterestedly doing the
very work which Christ has enjoined upon us—to engage, to the extent
of our ability, in helping and blessing those who need the help we can
give them. Strength comes by exercise; activity is the very condition
of life. Those who endeavor to maintain Christian life by passively
accepting the blessings that come through the means of grace, and
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doing nothing for Christ, are simply trying to live by eating without
working. And in the spiritual as in the natural world, this always results
in degeneration and decay. A man who would refuse to exercise his
limbs would soon lose all power to use them. Thus the Christian who
will not exercise his God-given powers not only fails to grow up into
Christ, but he loses the strength that he already had.
The church of Christ is God’s appointed agency for the salvation of
men. Its mission is to carry the gospel to the world. And the obligation
rests upon all Christians. Everyone, to the extent of his talent and
opportunity, is to fulfill the Saviour’s commission. The love of Christ,
revealed to us, makes us debtors to all who know Him not. God has
given us light, not for ourselves alone, but to shed upon them.