The Christian’s Secret Strength

We should certainly attempt always to follow Jesus, to walk as he walked, to speak as he spoke, to think as he thought, and to mold our whole conduct and conversation on the pattern that he has left us; yet our best attempts will leave us more and more convinced that our only hope for redemption, salvation, forgiveness, lies in the mercy of the Father and the merits of the Son. Pray for and make sure of an interest in these, for even after we have been made new creatures in Jesus Christ, the most that we can do – nor that without the aids of the Holy Spirit – is to creep along the path which the Savior walked, and leave the mark of our knees where he left the prints of his feet.

Christ judges them to be the men of worth who are the men of work. Be thy life then devoted to his service. Now for the work, hereafter for the wages; earth for the cross, heaven for the crown. Go thy way, assured that there is not a prayer you offer, nor a word you speak, nor a foot you walk, nor a tear you shed, nor a hand you hold out to the perishing, nor a warning you give to the careless, nor a wretched child you pluck from the streets, nor a visit paid to the widow or fatherless, nor a loaf of bread you lay on a poor man’s table, that there is nothing you do for the love of God and man, but is faithfully registered in the chronicles of the kingdom, and shall be publicly read that day when Jesus, calling you up perhaps from a post as mean as Mordecai’s shall crown your brows before an assembled world, saying, “Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king delights to honor.”

Frederic Leighton, Samson and the Lion, illustration for Dalziel's Bible Gallery, wood engraving by Dalziel Brothers, ca. 1881. Public Domain.

I do not say that it is plain sailing to heaven. I do not say but that the duty that we owe to Christ may and shall expose us to what the world accounts and what flesh and blood feel to be pain. Be it so! What pains Jesus endured, what sacrifices he submitted to for us! Beside, how should it make us take suffering joyfully to think that it is those who are crucified with him on earth that shall be crowned with him in heaven. None else. They win in this game that lose. They live in this warfare that die. If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with him. He that loseth his life shall find it.

God’s people shall renew their strength and mount up with wings as eagles. But it is quite a mistake to fancy that, like that bird, which builds her nest on the dizzy crag, and soars aloft, and sails along in the paths of the clouds and thunder, religion belongs only to the highest, and what are called holy, duties of life. While she rises to its highest, she stoops to its meanest, occupations. As well as the seraphs that sing before the throne, as the heralds who sound the trumpet of the gospel and proclaim salvation to perishing sinners, as the Christian who enters his closet to hold communion with God, they are doing the work of the Lord who kindle a fire, or sweep a floor, or guide a plow, or sit over a desk, or work at a bench or break stones on the road, with a desire to do their work that God may be thereby glorified.

Samson’s great strength lay in his hair. Shorn of that, he was like other men. The Christian’s great strength lies in his or her love.

Source:  Thomas Guthrie, Gems of Illustration (Funk & Wagnalls, 1882) 7, 9, 22, 57, 112.