Build for Eternity!

~“IG deep, and lay your foundations well! These words we have rung in the ears of almost every inquirer with whom we have ever conversed. In pressing this friendly admonition upon each awakened soul, we felt that we were acting in the line of God’s teachings. Our Lord exhorted his hearers to build upon the rock and not upon the quicksand. The history of about every revival furnishes a list (either longer or shorter) of those whose serious feelings prove to be evanescent. There was “feeling” and only feeling. There was no abiding faith and no regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. And so like “the morning cloud and the early dew,” their transient impressions soon passed away. Happy is it for such, if while under this temporary seriousness they do not enter into solemn church-covenants which they can not fulfil.

Here then is a danger, a most clear and palpable danger against which every inquirer after salvation should be faithfully warned. A seeking soul is only safe in the hands of the Divine Spirit. To learn the will of the Holy Spirit, to obey the voice of the Spirit, to co-operate with the Spirit is the first and chief thing. If God’s Spirit, is so dealing with an awakened man as to give him a deeper sense of his own sinfulness and weakness, then is it an awful mistake for any Christian to speak “false peace” to that man. It sends him to a quicksand when the Spirit is so dealing with him as to lead him to Jesus the Rock. Too many inquirers are deluded with the idea that they can be saved too easily. Their own guilt, and the heinous nature of sin, and their inherent worthlessness and weakness, are not sufficiently realized. They are constantly urged to ‘’accept Christ” before they feel a genuine need of Christ and honest desire to possess him in their hearts. Temporary relief is all they want, and all they gain. The medicine is pressed upon them before they truly apprehend their own deadly disease; and so the remedy proves to them to be only an anodyne. This is shallow mockery. Against this fatal mistake, that wise winner of souls, Charles G. Finney, most carefully guarded himself, and tried to guard others. So did Dr. Payson of Portland. They both aimed to lead sinners to feel their own depravity before a holy God, to feel the wickedness of sin and its desert of a “wrath to come “; they subsoiled with the plough of divine truth which ripped to pieces self-righteousness and other secret sins, and turned these secrets up to the daylight. Souls thus intelligently convicted could be intelligently guided to the atoning Jesus as the pardoner and life-giver. Such thorough work made thorough converts. The great majority of them stood fire. Many of the soundest Christians of the last generation were converted to God under the wise, prayerful and ‘’painful” labors of Payson and Finney.

If this article falls under the eye of any awakened sinner let me most affectionately press upon you a few vital truths. You are a sinner. God tells you that in his Word. Pray that he will discover to you your own guilt, and make you feel it. Sin is in itself an exceedingly abominable thing. Not only does it bring perdition after it, but it deserves perdition. “Against thee only have I sinned, and done this iniquity in thy sight” is the confession you ought to make. With confession of sin there must be sincere renunciation of it. As the person who is sick of a bilious fever can not get well until the “bad humors” are purged out of the body, so you must get the sin out of you, before you are cured.

This is the Holy Spirit’s work. Co-operate with him. Entreat him to do a thorough work upon your conscience. No matter if the process costs pain and self-humbling and tears, or wakeful nights. Do not, I entreat you, let your “hurt be healed slightly.’7 Bible repentance involves both hatred of sin, and a turning from it with honest endeavor to obey God. The more uncomfortable you feel about your own sins, the more you loathe them, the more you will realize your need of Jesus Christ. The Jewish leper understood what a scabby wretch he was when he cried out, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” Bartimeus knew well the pitchy darkness around him, when he prayed so vehemently that he might receive his sight. Your soul too is leprous with guilt. Your spiritual eye has been put out by sin. Jesus alone can cleanse your evil heart; he alone can open your blind eyes. He alone can give you the new life. Here comes in the mighty meaning and the glorious efficacy of atoning blood. That alone cleanses. Jesus tasted death for you. He bore your sins in his own body on the tree. The worse you see yourself to be, the more need that you avail yourself at once of his atonement and put yourself at once in his hands.

Coming thus to Jesus is the vital step. This is conversion when it is done with the whole heart. You are shut up to this. No other name is given whereby you can be saved. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ.” Every thing else is sand. You are building for eternity. Build to last! I have seen flimsy houses whose walls bulged and cracked; the trouble was that they were hastily run up on a worthless foundation. Some Christian professors’ lives show most shocking cracks and lean over most alarmingly. They were badly built on a bad foundation. You are working now for the judgment-day which will try every man’s work of what sort it is. Dig deep and lay your foundation solidly.

“Just what is meant by building on Christ?77 We answer that you are to renounce all idea of saving yourself, and trust Jesus Christ to save you. As you have no strength, Jesus offers to put his infinite arms beneath you. Instead of self-gratification as the chief end of life, Jesus implants a new principle to base your life upon. He gives an inward grace which is something more than a happy emotion; it is a controlling power to fortify you in temptation and to hold you as an unseen anchor holds a vessel in a storm. When you sincerely embrace Jesus as your Saviour and rest on his atonement for pardon, when you look to him for daily direction, lean on him for support, and are joined to him in heart-union, then you may be sure that you have got the everlasting rock-bed underneath you. Christ’s work for you and his work within you is the corner-stone. On that you may build as long as you live, piling up grace upon grace, and one good deed upon another. If Christ’s work within is genuine you must be a better man or woman, more truthful, kind, honest, loving, and pure. A man can not have Jesus in his soul and no one find it out. And if other people do not find it out, then your conversion is a hollow sham. “By their fruits” Christians must be known. The best looking tree that bears no apples is a lie.

Faith without works is dead. A well-built life is a structure where tongue and hand, and brain and heart, are each day adding a godly word or deed, under the inspiration of Christ’s love. Perfect you never will be in this world; but oh! how diflerent your life were, if Jesus were not in your heart! Now, then, my friend, make thorough work of it; let God have his own way with you. Don’t dictate to him. Simply seek to know what Christ would have you do, and then do it. Ask him not to let you be deceived. Test yourself by the Bible. Religion is not guess-work. Every one who becomes Christ’s actually “knows whom he believes.” Christ will know you. When the great day of trial comes, your foundation will be found as solid as the gates of heaven.