| Garden of the Heart |
Chapter 11 |
Page 7 |
Confessing Christ in church services is right, but we must continue our witnessing when we go out into the world. This is not always easy. The Rev. J.H. Jowett tells of a man who attended a meeting and said, a few days afterward: “I was never so blessed and lifted up in soul in my life as I was that hour. It was like being in heaven. But,” he went on, “unfortunately, I had to be at work at six o’clock next morning, and before eight I was wondering what a preacher of last night would say about living a Christian life if he had to be in our factory as I have to be.” It may not be easy to go on Monday morning, after a quiet spiritual Sunday, into a mill or store, or into the busy mart, to meet with all sorts and conditions of men, and continue our faithfulness and the fervour and rapture of our devotion. But, nevertheless, we are to be Christ’s witnesses in our Monday places of work as truly as in our Sunday places of worship. When the power of the Holy Spirit is in us, the noise of a factory, the rush of business, or the cares of a mother’s life in her home will not break the spirit and sweetness of the life we are living for our Lord. Anyone can be devout at the communion or in a meeting for prayer, where there is nothing to distract or annoy him, nothing to excite or trouble him. The real problem, however, is to carry the peace of God and the spirit of Christ out into the fret, worry, and noise of the weekdays. But this is not impossible. The presence of Christ is as really with us on the weekdays when we are at our common tasks as it is on Sundays when we are at our devotions.
True, we cannot make heaven yet for ourselves in this life of struggle and care. At the best we shall have our failures, our defeats, our stumblings, will make mistakes, and will not reach our high ideal. But here is the test: so we go on fighting, striving, undiscouraged in our hard days here, just as determined to reach our ideal after a day of failure as we were when we set out in the morning? Charles Kingsley presents well the human side of the Christian life in these words: “Oh, at least be able to say in that day: ‘Lord, I am no hero. I have been careless cowardly, sometimes all but mutinous. Punishment I have deserved, I deny it not. But a traitor I have never been. I have tried to fight on thy side in thy battle against evil. I have tried to do the duty which lay nearest to me; and to leave whatever thou didst commit to my charge a little better than I found it. I have not been good, but I have at least tried to be good.’”
This every young Christian should be able to say. He cannot say more while he is still in this world, beset with infirmities. He will live no day perfectly, yet he will never give up striving to become perfect.
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