Workers
With Christ
By Mrs.
E. G. White
A great
work has been committed to the followers of Christ. Every one may do something
to strengthen and build up the church, and to enlighten those who are in
darkness. But there must be a feeling of individual responsibility. Each must seek to maintain a close connection with God, that he may have strength to aid and counsel others. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at
all." The heart in which his Spirit dwells, will
be a channel of light to others. It cannot be otherwise.
Those who
do not preserve a living connection with God themselves,
will have little interest in the salvation of others. They have no light
from Heaven to reflect to the world. If
these careless, irresponsible ones could see the fearful results of their
course, they would be alarmed. Every one of
us is exerting an influence upon some other soul; and we shall each be held
accountable for the effect of that influence.
Words and actions have a telling power, and the long hereafter will show the
results of our life here. Yet how few consider these things! The members of the
church listen to the word of God, spoken by his servant, and then one goes to
his farm, another to his merchandise; and by their absorbing interest in the
affairs of this life, they declare that eternal things are of secondary
importance to them.
We should
prayerfully study the word of God, and ponder it in our hearts, and we shall be
better prepared to obey it in our lives. We
must each have an experience for ourselves. The work of our salvation lies
between God and our own souls. Though all
nations are to pass in judgment before him, yet he
will examine the case of each individual with as close and searching scrutiny
as if there were not another being on earth.
At the
final day, we shall be approved or condemned according to our works. The Judge
of all the earth will render a just decision. He will not be bribed; he cannot
be deceived. He who made man, and whose are the worlds and all the treasures
they contain—he it is who weighs character in the balance of eternal justice.
Would that
we as a people might realize how much is pending upon our earnestness and
fidelity in the service of Christ. All who realize their accountability to God, will be burden-bearers in the church. There can be no
such thing as a lazy Christian, though there are many indolent professors of
Christianity. While Christ's followers will
realize their own weakness, they will cry earnestly to God for strength, that
they may be workers together with him. They
will constantly seek to become better men and better women,
that they may more faithfully perform the work which he has committed to
their hands.
The days
are evil, wickedness prevails; therefore there is the greater need that Christ
should be faithfully represented to the world as a mighty Saviour, able to save
to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. But the professed people of God
are asleep. They are not doing what it is in
their power to do for the salvation of souls. Especially
are the youth deficient. They seem to feel no burden for souls, no duty to
represent Christ to those with whom they associate. In all this are they not
following in the steps of church-members who are older in experience, and who
should have set them a better example?
The young,
as well as those of more advanced age, are accountable to God for their time,
their influence, and their opportunities. They
have their fate in their own hands. They may rise to any height of moral excellence, or they
may sink to the lowest level of depravity. There
is no election but one's own by which any may perish. Every person is a free moral agent, deciding his own
future by his daily life. What course, then,
is it wisest for us, as rational beings, to pursue? Shall we live as becometh
candidates for eternity, or shall we fail to fulfill the great end of our
creation?
Jesus died
that through his merits men might be redeemed from the power of sin, and be
adopted into the family of God; and in view of the great sacrifice which Christ
has made for us, we are exhorted to work out our salvation with fear and
trembling. Yet how many, endowed by their
Creator with reasoning powers, reject the high honors which Christ proffers,
and degrade themselves to the level of the brute. Because they do not like to retain God in their
knowledge, he leaves them to follow their own evil ways. They yield to Satan's control the souls for whose
redemption Christ has died.
We are free to obey or to disregard the will of God; free to pray or to live without prayer. As God compels no man to be righteous, so none
are compelled to be impenitent and vicious. Human passions may be strong and
wayward, but help has been laid upon One who is
mighty. While that help will not be forced upon any who despise the gift, it is
freely, gladly given to all who seek it in sincerity.
We may be
assailed by powerful temptations, for we have a powerful, cunning foe; but
these temptations are never irresistible. He who struggles against them in
the strength of Christ, will overcome; but God will never deliver those who
will not strive to free themselves. The
Christian must be watchful against sins of the flesh, watchful against sins of
the mind. Says the apostle, "Gird up the loins of your
mind." The thoughts and feelings must be restrained with a firm
hand, lest they lead us into sin. How many have become the willing slaves of vice,
their physical and mental powers enervated, their souls debased, because impure
thoughts were allowed to dwell in the mind, and to stain the soul. "Unto the pure, all things are pure." To those
who are pure in heart, all the duties and lawful pursuits of life are pure;
while to those whose heart and conscience are defiled, all things are impure.
Another
sin of the mind is that of extolling and deifying human reason, to the neglect
of divine revelation. Here, too, we must "gird up the loins of the
mind." We are living in an age when the minds of men are ever on the
stretch for something new. Rightly,
directed, and kept within proper limits, this desire is commendable. God has given us in
his created works enough to excite thought and stimulate investigation. He does not desire men to be less acute, less inquiring,
or less intelligent. But with all our aspirations, and in all our researches,
we should remember that arrogance is not greatness, nor is conceit knowledge.
Human pride is an evidence, not of strength, but of
weakness. It reveals not wisdom, but folly. To exalt reason unduly is to abase
it. To place the human in rivalry with the divine, is
to make it contemptible.
How can
man be just with God? This is the one great
question that most concerns mankind. Can human reasoning find an answer?—No; revelation alone can solve this all-important problem, can shed light upon the pathway of man's life. What folly, then, to turn from the one great source of
light, the Sun of righteousness, to follow the feeble and uncertain light of
human wisdom!
Every
individual has a soul to save or to lose. Each has a case pending at the bar of
God. Each must meet the great Judge face to face. How important, then, that
every mind contemplate often the solemn scene when the Judgment shall sit and
the books be opened, when with Daniel every individual must stand in his lot at
the end of the days.
Oh that
Christ's followers might realize that it is not houses and lands, bank-stock or
wheat-fields, or even life itself, that is now at stake; but souls for whom
Christ died! We should ever remember that the men and women whom we daily meet
are Judgment-bound. They will stand before the great white throne, to testify
against us if we are unfaithful to duty, if our example shall lead them away
from the truth and from Christ, or to bear witness that our fidelity has
encouraged them in the path of righteousness. These souls will either live to
offer praise to God and the Lamb through ceaseless ages, or they will perish
with the wicked. Christ suffered and died that they might enjoy a blissful eternity.
What sacrifices are we willing to make for their salvation?
End of Article