01.02. Going Out To Men

Chapter 2 - GOING OUT TO MEN

It is not enough to go IN: one must also Go OUT

Do you remember Caleb’s gift to his daughter in the land of promise? He gave her a land that had “upper and nether springs.” There is a beautiful spiritual teaching here. God indeed has sky-springs. Ever and anon the heavens open and pour forth their rains upon the thirsty earth, making the fields to spring up in fragrant flowers. But God also has lower springs. Right in the pathway of our daily toil, from amid the dust and grime of the earth God makes springs to burst forth and slake the thirst amid the labor and heat of the summer. Even while he toils the weary worker may kneel and drink of the spring that bursts from the ground at his feet. So of the spiritual life. He who goes in to the secret place of prayer does indeed drink of the fountain of God’s life. This is God’s upper spring, always flowing for those who go in. But God has His lower springs, too, which burst from the ground by the pathway of our daily service. And the strength of God, and the blessing of God is ours when we go out in service as surely as when we go in for prayer in the loneliness of the mountain tops or the sequestered depths of the forest. We wax strong and grow in grace not only by the in-take of communion but by the out-give of service.

The WORLD IS WAITING for you to go OUT.

I know a Christian man who had this experience. He was strongly impressed to speak to a business friend concerning his soul’s salvation. Hour after hour the impression stayed with him. But he hesitated, and delayed. Night came, and he retired, but not to sleep. A strong conviction that he was disobeying the Spirit of God gripped his soul. Four hours he tossed in distress upon his bed. Away after mid-night his wife was awakened by his unrest, and sought the cause. He told her of his plight and then added. “Just as soon as I can get to his store in the morning I will go and speak to my friend of Jesus Christ.” Morning came. Swallowing a hasty breakfast he hastened to the merchant’s place of business. The latter was closeted with a couple of business associates. Up and down, outside the office, the waiting friend paced, restlessly. As soon as the callers were gone he walked into the office and greeted the merchant. The latter in reply said, “I want to see you upon an important matter.” My friend answered, “John, I have no time for business now. I want to talk to you about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.” “That is the very thing I have been waiting for you to speak to me about,” was the astonishing reply. Without any further word of invitation the business man definitely accepted Christ. All this time the spirit of God had been striving with him. All this time he had been waiting for the human agent who should be God’s messenger to bring him the gospel; waiting for the man who would “go out” even as the Spirit of God was seeking to move him to go. Friend, somewhere some soul awaits your going out. It may be the young employee to whom you have never spoken of Christ: it may be the man whom you jostle daily in the market place or the exchange: it may be the one who is dearest to you in the fellowship of friendship and yet who knows not the Lord to whom you give allegiance; or it may be a little group in the dark and distant ends of the heathen world who, even unconsciously to themselves, await the coming of the one who shall be to them God’s messenger of light, life and deliverance from the captivity of sin and death. Therefore, for the sake of those who wait your coming fulfil your royal priesthood. Give yourself to go in and go out. Go in and catch a vision of the tender love of God: go out and bear that love in face, voice, deed to lost men. Go in and see God’s wondrous compassion in forgiving your blackened past: go out and bear the same spirit of forgiveness to those who have sinned against you. Go in and mark God’s patience with all your blindness, selfishness, and neglect: go out in long suffering- with those who treat you with some of the same coldness and unconcern. Go in and get a vision of the Christ-life: go out and put away the pettiness, folly, and indifference of the self-life. And as you go in and go out you will feed, you will find pasture, you will grow strong in the spiritual life.

Any kind of GOING OUT, however humble, PASTURES THE SOUL.

“I was walking down street one cold winter day,” said a Christian man. “At a near-by corner sat an old woman. Her face was wrinkled, her head white with age. Her withered hand was out-stretched in appeal for aid. Moved by a strong feeling of her need I stopped and dropped a good-sized coin into her hand. ‘Does you mean all that for me, Mister?’ said she. I nodded assent. ‘I’ll carry you to the feet of my Jesus for that,’ was her trembling response. At once a great joy leaped into my heart. I passed on my way with my soul aglow with the consciousness of the Master’s presence, marveling that so great a blessing could come from so trifling a deed.”

And so however insignificant your going out may seem to you yet strength and growth will come in the going. It is not the sweep of service but the act of serving which brings the soul-growth. Steady, persistent service seemingly of the most trifling kind will be pasture to your soul, and bring growth to your life. Aim to be faithful in your sphere. Leave to God the expansion of that sphere. To teach the class, visit the sick, comfort the sorrowing, cheer the downcast, minister on all sides in the little things which come daily to your willing hands - all this sort of going out will feed your inner life, and steadily advance you in Christian growth. “If ye know these things blessed are ye if ye do them.” It is the doing of little things rather than in the dreaming of great ones that we find pasture and most perfectly fulfil the conditions of growth.

Going OUT will SAVE US from SPIRITUAL MORBIDNESS.

I have a dear friend in the heart of Africa. His party was out on a trip of exploration. They had been gone nearly six weeks. One day they ran out of water. For two days he and his comrades suffered the agonies of thirst. Then they came to a well, which had been dug by the natives. My friend rushed up to the well, his lips parched with burning thirst, his whole body yearning for the life-giving water. Instead of the coveted water he was greeted with a growl. A huge lion leaped up from the bottom of the well, and fell only a few feet short of reaching him. The lion, too, had evidently gone there for water. He had fallen to the bottom of the dry well. And when my friend came looking for water to quench his fiery thirst, he found instead a ravenous wild beast.

Is not this a parable of our spiritual lives? So long as we keep going in and going out: so long as we keep these springs a-flowing, the upper spring of communion, and the lower one of practical, loving ministry, that long do our lives stay strong and sane; sweet, natural, wholesome. But when we grow careless in communion, and slack in service: when these upper and nether springs dry up, and cease from their blessed and divine out-flow, then come the wild beasts of spiritual morbidness and take possession. Gloom and despondency: undue and unwholesome introspection: unnatural craving after spiritual emotions and inward frames instead of the daily doing of the will of God for our lives: beclouding of assurance and the inswarming of hosts of doubts and questionings which the normal faith-life and lovelife fling off with ease and quickness - all these wild beast foes possess our inward selves, and harass our inward souls. And then when men come to drink at our well-springs they find the fountains dry, transformed into a den of spiritual foes, and they turn away disappointed and unrefreshed. Yea, verily child of God, there is nothing which will keep your life so well balanced, so symmetrical, so free from morbidness, so happy in the Lord, as for you to incarnate in your daily every-day life this simple, yet sweeping teaching of our Lord about going in and going out. Try it, and see what a wondrous far-reaching cure it is for all your inner doubts and darkness.