WE HAVE come again to the time when we stand on the threshold of a new year. As we write, 1959 is fast speeding into eternity. A few more days and it will be no more. Only the memory of it and its events, deeds, accomplishments, failures, and triumphs will remain with us. We would do well at this time to pause for a moment in order to take a glance in retrospect at the twelve months that have passed, for the purpose of discovering what progress, if any, we have made in our individual Christian lives and in our service as workers in the cause of God.
Even a casual survey of the past will convince most, if not all, of us of things in our life and experience that have not only been disappointing but which cause us keen regret and bitter remorse. Many things that it is our privilege or duty to do have been left undone. Resolutions have been broken and vows unkept. Deeds have been committed that we do not care to recall.
What are we to do about the past? What of the future? What are the possibilities that challenge us as we face the new year?
The Past
The apostle Paul has set us an example in respect to what our attitude can and should be relative to our past. Recognizing that he had not fully apprehended that which was possible to him in and through Christ, he declared, "But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind" (Phil. 3:13). God wants us to forget the failures and mistakes of the past. A momentary recollection of our past shortcomings will give us cause for added thanksgiving to God for His mercy and grace, but we are not to think of the past in such a manner that our present happiness in Him and our service for Him will be marred.
In respect to our past sins and shortcomings the promise is that if we have repented of them and confessed them they have been forgiven, and we have been cleansed from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). The apostle Paul declares that confessed iniquities are forgiven and confessed sins are covered (Rom. 4:7). He further states that God remembers them no more (Heb. 8:12). When God forgives, He forgets. Why, then, should we remember? Why should we permit the past to discourage us?
The Future
The apostle Paul might have allowed the past to spoil his joy in the Lord and also the effectiveness of his future service. This, however, he did not do. "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before" was his attitude. He realized that constantly he was faced with new opportunities and possibilities. These, he recognized, must be his chief concern. So it must be with the workers in the cause of God today. New opportunities and challenging possibilities constantly present themselves to us. These must engage our attention and influence us in our attitudes. Past mistakes and failures must be made steppingstones to success. Our future successes or failures depend entirely upon our relationship to God's plan and purpose for us.
God's Purpose for Us
God has set a goal for us. Paul speaks of it as "the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:14). This is spoken of elsewhere in the Scriptures. Christ, while on earth, expressed it when He said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). There are certain aspects of God in which we cannot equal Him. The context of this scripture indicates that when Christ spoke these words He had reference to the attitude of God toward men. God loves all men—the sinner as well as the saint. To be like Him in this respect is Christ's purpose for us. If we measured up to the expectations of God for us in this, how different would be our relations to our fellow men.
Through the apostle Peter, Heaven's goal for our lives has also been expressed: "As he which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living" (1 Peter 1:15, R. V.). Godlikeness and Christlikeness is the ideal that has been set for our lives and characters. Our lives should be a revelation of Christ. It is the design of God that we should be so fully and completely yielded to Christ that the life we live will be His life and the service we render will be His service.
Holiness, perfection in and through Him, Christlikeness—that is God's plan for us. He desires that sin shall be so fully removed from our lives, and that right doing shall so completely take its place, that our lives will be a revelation of Christ's life to our fellow men. What a challenge that is to each one of us!
The Realization of God's Purpose
Multiplied thousands have tried in their own strength to attain to God's ideal for human life and Christian service and have failed. But how can we reach the standard God has set for us? The answer is simple. It is only in and through Christ that we can meet God's expectations for us. It is not through the strength and efforts of man that perfection of character and life and success in Christian service can be attained. God, therefore, does not ask man to meet His design by his own efforts. He asks us to have the kind of faith that leads us to place ourselves and our all in the hands of Christ and to depend on Him.
Paul, like hosts of others, tried in his own way to overcome his sins and besetments and to realize God's purpose for him, but he failed. So intense were his struggles and so devastating were his defeats that he well nigh despaired. In desperation he cried out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" There was an answer to his cry that enabled him exultingly to exclaim, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:24, 25). It was in Christ that the apostle found the solution to the problem of his failures in Christian living and service.
So fully did Paul enter into the experience of that which Christ is willing to do for everyone who looks to Him, that he was able to exclaim, "Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place" (2 Cor. 2:14). And again, "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:57).
Victory Is a Gift
Victory in the Christian life and success in Christian service are the gifts of Christ to His children. They come to men and women on the basis of faith, and not merely as the result of human effort and struggle. In 1 John 5:4 we read that "this is the victory that overcometh . . . , even our faith." Faith in Christ is trusting in Him, depending upon Him, letting Him do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Victory and success in Christian life and service, therefore, do not come as the result of that which we do, but are the result of that which we permit and depend upon Christ to do for us.
The struggle and effort of the Christian life is the struggle involved in coming to the place where we are prepared to permit Christ to have complete possession of us and to use us in whatever way He chooses.
Not long ago I attended a meeting in New York City. Present was a man who has rendered a service in the cause of Christ that is both outstanding and thrilling. The chairman of the assembly invited this servant of God to give a brief report of his work. In responding he asked that he might first pray, "because," he said, "I never like to make even a report before I first pray." I shall never forget his very brief and simple but tremendously moving prayer. "Lord, help us to forget ourselves," he prayed, "for Thou canst do great things through those who forget themselves." That prayer enabled me to understand the secret behind the amazing service that man had rendered in the cause of Christ. How essential and how urgent is the need for every Seventhday Adventist worker to forget himself and to let Christ have full control.
"Without me ye can do nothing," said Christ (John 15:5). Man, left to himself, is helpless. God knows this and therefore does not ask us to cease from sinning and making mistakes and to render Him effec;tive service in our own strength and through our own efforts. He asks us to allow Christ to do this for us. It is His purpose and Christ's desire to effect a union with us that is so vital and so complete that His power and energy will be manifested in and through us. Willingness on our part for Him to do it is what Christ asks of us.
It is our responsibility, when we face sin and the frailties of our human nature, to resolve not to sin and not to make mistakes, and then it is our privilege to look to Christ as the One who can translate our resolves into experience and give us victory over our sins and besetments. It is also our responsibility to yield ourselves so completely and unreservedly to Him that He will be enabled to use us as humble instruments to do His work of grace and salvation in the lives of others. Through us He wants to reach the hearts and lives of lost men and women. The question, therefore, that comes to each of us and which we must answer is, "Am I willing to be anything or nothing, to go anywhere or to stay where I am, to engage in any line of service so that Christ will always be able to use me just as He chooses?"
Yield Yourselves to God
Paul, through whom Christ accomplished so much in so many places and for so many peoples, recognized the truth of this, and under the urge of the Holy Spirit he admonishes us in the words, "Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (Rom. 6:13). It is not to a particular place or to a personally chosen field, or to a department or a position in the organization of the church to which we are to yield ourselves. Ah, no! We are to yield ourselves to God, leaving it to Him to choose for us the nature and place of our service. To do this may bring to us inconveniences, hardships, trials, and persecutions as it did to Paul of old, but it will bring also satisfactions, joys, and rewards that can come to us in no other way. After all, there is no joy or satisfaction that can compare with that which comes from the knowledge that God is using us because we have abandoned ourselves and all our interests to Him.
The same apostle further admonishes us to bring "into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). That must be our first and chief concern. To comply with this counsel most assuredly requires us to forget our personal and selfish interests and ambitions, our comforts and conveniences, and our personal advantages and privileges. To glorify Him where and how He chooses is our privilege and responsibility.
Facing Earth's Closing Hour
As Seventh-day Adventist workers we must surely know from our observations of what is happening in the world today, and our understanding of these things in the light of Bible prophecy, that we have come to the last of the last days. Little time remains for us to complete the task that God has entrusted to us. Earth's multiplied millions must have an opportunity of hearing the message of God's mercy and love for sinners and of His wonderful plan to save them. But what are we doing to take that message to them? Let me make that question more personal. What am I doing and what are you doing? Are we so concerned over the salvation of men and women that we will forget ourselves, our comforts and conveniences, and permit Him to use us in any capacity to disclose His love and mercy and proffered salvation to them wherever they are and whatever the circumstances and conditions under which they exist?
We who are workers in the cause of God must never forget that we are not merely connected with a church for the purpose of ministering to the church. We are connected with what God designed was to be, from its beginning to its culmination, a movement! The prophet John, describing the people whom God purposed to raise up when the hour of His judgment began, declares, "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people" (Rev. 14:6). These words denote motion and movement, not a mere hovering about and over a church composed of people who have already heard the message of God for this day. Possibly our organized churches do need pastors to preach to them and to visit the sick and to bury the dead, but the times to which we have come surely demand that the lay members who have been appointed to church offices should be permitted and counted on to do much more of the work in the church than they are doing today. They would then free the conference worker to engage more fully, if not wholly, in the work of proclaiming the message of God for this hour to those who know it not.
How many workers there are in the Advent cause today who have never, or at least have not for a long time, engaged in the public proclamation of God's message to men for this hour. And how many there are who fail to make it a practice of their ministry to seek an entrance into the homes of people not of our faith for the purpose of opening the Bible and studying its messages with them. The everlasting gospel in the setting of the three angels' messages of Revelation 14:6-12 is designed by God to become the most arresting, the most startling, and the most challenging thing in the world in these last days. Over the cries of sad and broken hearts, the clamor and shouts of selfish men seeking position and acclaim, over the hum and the rattle of modern machinery and the din and roar of battle, the message of God is to sound. Through you and through me the voice of God is to be heard today, offering to men everywhere the salvation He has provided in and through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Brethren, as we face the new year let us respond to the challenge of God and make so complete a dedication of our all to Him that He will be able to use us fully. May we be the instruments through which His voice will be heard arousing the nations and urging men everywhere to accept His proffered salvation before it is forever too late.
