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Your heart cannot
be in the service of the Lord unless you can see beyond the duty. By this, I mean that the Soldier of the Cross must be able to see heaven in order to rescue the perishing and to see to the feeding of the sheep. Without a supernatural revelation of Christ's love for the Body, Grace that went to the Cross, and the reality of our alien status here, service will be done in the natural and will be two-pronged: it will be a ministry of death, and it will be short-lived. Another thing the Soldier of the Cross must do is sever his human relationship with his family. It is done in prayer and by faith, just like all other areas of life are given up in prayer. It is not possible to pour energy into the maintaining of anything and wholly serve. This does not mean that family relationships have to suffer or that love is lessened. But it certainly does mean that the Soldier may not do things to live up to the expectations of what the others expect in exchange for his commitment to the Cause of Christ. Most of the missionaries whose stories we have and in whose footsteps we follow, lost children in death or sent them to boarding schools for the better part of each year. Most left sobbing and clinging family members on docks or railway platforms as they left to obey the call. Numerous men spent years apart from their wives and children because the cry of the nations was so penetrating that the conscious mind could hold little else. Yes, there must be more than things to do. A man will not eagerly pour out his life on the soil of another land unless he sees more than the things that need fixing. He must see Jesus. He must desperately want to be with Him. He must want nothing else. He must be sure he has no other desperate longings. Then and only then, can he really enter the service of the Lord. Today, these are few and very, very far between. |
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