ZEAL
In a wealthy residential section of Richmond, Virginia, some new owners complained that the singing of a small Christian church nearby disturbed them. A petition to be presented to the city council was circulated.
The solicitors brought it for signing to a Jewish resident. He read it and said, “Gentlemen, I cannot sign it. If I believed as do these Christians that my Messiah had come, I would shout it from the housetops and on every street of Richmond, and nobody could stop me.”
John Milton got up at four o’clock every morning to work on Paradise Lost. William Cullen Bryant rewrote Thanatopsis ninety-five times. Noah Webster worked thirty-six years to produce the first edition of his dictionary. Many business executives put in ten or twelve hours a day, six or even seven days a week—not always because they have to, but because they are enthusiastic about their work.
A little girl saw a sign in a church meeting hall and was crying. It read, “The zeal of Thy house hath consumed me.” An elder asked why she was crying. “I’m afraid of the zeal.” He answered, “Don’t worry little girl; there’s no zeal in this place.”
The seventeenth-century English pastor Richard Baxter said he preached with great intensity because he saw himself as a dying man ministering to dying people. He always spoke as if he were preaching his last sermon and as if his listeners were hearing their last message. And what a schedule he maintained for fifty years! On each Monday and Tuesday he spent seven hours instructing the children of the parish, not omitting even one. On Wednesday he went from house to house to make sure the material needs of the widows, the aged, and the infirm were met. During the rest of the week he prepared his sermons and wrote books—a total of 160 volumes. As a result of his ministry, the town of Kidderminster was transformed. It had been a place full of sexual immorality and other vices, but it became a village in which almost every household honored God, read the Bible, and prayed. Baxter’s consuming zeal had paid off.
Dwight Morrow once wrote to his son, “The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try if you can to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.”
Wake up, sing up, preach up, pray up, pay up, stay up, and never give up or let up, or back up, or shut up, until the cause of Christ in the church and the world is built up.
—Woodland Christian Church, Kansas City, Missouri
Which Are You?
An attender or an absenter?
A pillar or a sleeper?
A wing or a weight?
A power or a problem?
A promoter or a provoker?
A giver or a getter?
A goer or a gadder?
A doer or a deadhead?
A booster or a bucker?
A supporter or a sponger?
A soldier or a slacker?
A worker or a worrier?
A lighter or a leaner?
A friend or a faultfinder?
A helper or a hinderer?
Taking the line of least resistance makes rivers and men crooked.
If a man stands up and cheers for a football team in a stadium, he is called a “fan.” But if he stands and cheers with conviction for the cause of Jesus Christ, he is labeled a “fanatic.”
The church needs:
More tithes and fewer drives;
More action and less faction;
More workers and fewer shirkers;
More backers and fewer slackers;
More praying and less straying.
My greatest loss—to lose my soul.
My greatest gain—Christ my Savior.
My greatest object—to glorify God.
My greatest crown—to win souls for Christ.
My greatest joy—God’s salvation.
My greatest inheritance—heaven and its glory.
My greatest victory—over death through Christ.
My greatest neglect—so great a salvation.
My greatest crime—to reject Christ.
My greatest bargain—to lose all to win Christ.
My greatest profit—godliness now and forever.
My greatest peace—passes all understanding.
My greatest knowledge—to know God and Christ.