The promise of the Lord to me was: “For as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” O, how comforting that Scripture has been to me. When on hard fields of labor, and when it seemed as though very little if anything, accomplished, the above word of the Lord would come to my heart with such an assurance, and in such sweetness that I have been made to rejoice in the goodness of the Lord to me.
We are often placed in a position, allowing the world to judge, would call it a tremendous defeat. But in obeying the voice of God there is no defeat. We may not always see just what we have done, the good accomplished. Perhaps it is best we should not. Spiritual pride might find way into our heart and destroy us.
The command is, “Go forward.” We are not to stop to analyze results, in order to get at exact accomplishments, but move on, laboring with all our might, and leaving results with God. In that day, and under the light of judgment fires, it will appear in all the grandeur of eternal blessedness. “Your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” What precious opportunities God has given us of laying up our treasures on high. Look out in what direction you may, the fields are white already to harvest. Golden opportunities for doing good, and getting good, are constantly placed within our reach, and to be like our divine Lord and Master, who went about doing good, so must we, looking mainly for our reward in that day when He shall come to make up His jewels. O how blessed to hear in that day, “Well done!” Notwithstanding the glittering crown that often seems so nigh to the Christian soldier, he feels as expressed in the following lines:
“Let me stay; I fain would labor In the vineyard of the Lord; For the fields are ready whitening, Jesus says so in His word. Let me thrust the Spirit’s cycle, In the fields already white; Let me blow the Gospel trumpet; Let me do with all my might.
Let me stay and wear the armor That my Father doth supply; Let me cheer the broken hearted, Help the pilgrim on his way. Let me point the poor and needy To a boundless store of grace, To a mansion in the heavens, Where the weary are at rest.
Let me stay and warn poor sinners Of the danger they are in, While by Christ they’re unprotected, Foes without and fears within; Let me tell how Jesus loved them When he died upon the tree, When he cried in grief and anguish, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken me?’