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::R0317 : page 5::

CONSECRATION TO A WORK

Among Christians there is much which passes for “entire consecration,” but it is often a consecration to some self-imposed task, or work, instead of to God.

Some are consecrated and are living sacrifices to business, some to their families, some to the temperance work, some to building up a denominational church or Sunday School, some to ministering to the poor and the sick. These are each good enough in their way, but none of these are the proper consecration for a follower of Jesus.

Our consecration, like that of Jesus, should be to do the will of our Father in Heaven. Jesus says he came not to do his own will, but the will of Him that sent him. (John 6:38) The fact that you have any choice or preference as to what you shall do, is an evidence in itself, that your will is not dead.

Consecration to a work of our own choosing merely, will never bring us to the great reward. “I beseech you brethren, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable UNTO GOD.” Then, if He sends you into the “temperance work,” or into any other work, it will be acceptable as unto the Lord.

If will less, and seeking only to do his will it will bring us to His Word much and often, to learn that will, and “He that seeketh findeth.” We leave the subject here, merely suggesting that thus seeking after, thus consecrating, some who are now—laboring chiefly for “the meat that perisheth” or Temperance and moral reforms in the world, or for the extension of sectarian church influence, would find directions something like the following:

This is the will of God even YOUR sanctification. (1 Thes. 4:3.) Do “good unto all men [in any way] as you have opportunity especially to the household of faith.” (Gal. 6:10.) “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together” (Heb. 10:25.) but meet for the purpose of “BUILDING UP YOURSELVES on your most holy faith.” (Jude 20.)

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— January And February, 1882 —