Your Work for Jesus, Does it Cost You Anything?
A FRIEND called on me when I was convalescent. Just as she was leaving she saw on the table some work I had been doing for Missions. “Ah!” said she, “I see your work for the Lord costs you something.” “No,” said I, “I fear my work for Him is worth nothing.” So my friend said, “Just sit down and I will tell you something I heard at the prayer-meeting. The speaker spoke so beautifully just to our hearts. He said, ‘You do not value anything that you buy very cheap, but if the article costs you much you value it greatly, and so, dear hearers, the Lord values what you give to Him by sacrifice — something that costs you much.’ “Oh do, then, dear readers, seek to give to Him what HE values — your time, your powers, or your money, not stinted, but generously, not something you do not feel or care about, but something denied. Denial of self for Jesus, He values.
The speaker went on to say: “I will tell you how grieved I felt for myself and how I rejoiced for my neighbor. It was on this wise. He bore for over an hour, for Christ’s sake, what I couldn’t bear for more than a minute or two. I visited a poor man dying of cancer in the throat. It was more than distressing, and after a few minutes I couldn’t stop, but as I went home I met―, who said, ‘I sat more than an hour yesterday reading the Word and praying with poor ―.’ ‘Oh!’ said the speaker, ‘how condemned I felt when I thought what it must have cost him.’”
Yes, reader, if you have never before given to your Lord and Master something costly to you (mind a shilling or a penny may be costly to you) whereas £5 to another may be a contemptible offering; see Mark 12:41-44) begin now. It is never too late to mend. Be like the woman who broke her costly alabaster box of ointment over her Lord. How extra sweet it is to think He says, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto Me”!
EMILY P. LEAKEY
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