NOTHING GAINED WITHOUT LABOUR
NOTHING GAINED WITHOUT LABOUR
Nothing is accomplished without loss and suffering; not that it is the loss and suffering which produce the effect, but if there be not toil and suffering, there is no depth in the work. What is ‘easily got, is easily gone’. The truth that seems plain and conclusive beyond all question, and that there is no difficulty in accepting, tries us to the very quick when we really adopt it. There is no sympathy in our nature with it, and yet it seemed so plain and self-evident, that we reckoned on following it out as easily as one would directions as to one’s way through a forest or town. We find as we are really on Christ’s path - the way of truth, that the power which draws us on, meets with resistance at every step, and that we are like a dog setting his fore feet against the course his master calls on him to follow in, or like the boy’s paper kite, flying upwards by being pulled against the wind. The greater the wind, and the greater the pull, the higher we go. But then the resistance is great, and herein is the toil, and the suffering. The more truly we are on the path of life, the more we shall find that there is no co-operation but resistance in every bit of our nature; but if we yield like the paper kite to the pull, the very resistance only deepens the work in us and we rise. We often think that we can fly without any difficulty; that is, we see through grace, the path so plainly that we cannot [p. 184] suppose that either oneself or others can be so dull and sluggish as not to enter on it. But we soon find that we have either to bury the dead, or bid them farewell who are at home in our house, and it is no small thing to break away and be superior to either or both these claims of nature. Hence the man who feels they are there - that the wind is against him, the more he does so, and yet gives himself to the hand that pulls, the more he ascends. The more I feel how contrary all nature is, the very best of it, so that the one whom the Lord loved must bear his cross if he would follow Him (Mark 10), the more I bear about me the dying of Jesus. I am not surprised that there is not more of the life of Jesus manifested in us because there is so little of the dying of Jesus.
A man may have got new and beautiful furniture for his house, but there is no place for it, unless the old furniture is cast out; and however he may admire the new he will have toil and suffering in casting out the old; but as it is cast out and room made for the new, he finds that there is great profit. We must expect nothing without labour; it is said of Epaphras, “labouring fervently ... in prayers” (Colossians 4: 12). There is no getting on in any one without toil and suffering, but every bit of the old furniture which you cast out to make room for a new article, only makes you more earnest to move more of the heavy articles, in order to make room for all the unpacked and as yet unused valuables, which are still only in store; so do not be discouraged, but labour on, and labour on, for in all labour there is profit.