THE USE OF HUMAN MEANS IN THE LORD'S WORK

THE USE OF HUMAN MEANS IN THE LORD’S WORK

Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, His residence and His vessel.

I am quite ready to accept anything the vessel may be led by Him to do. I may promise, in the fear of the ^[p. 304] Lord, and subject to Him, to come to a place or places. This is entirely between the vessel and the Owner of it. It is where one acts outside of the individual responsibility that I object.

A handbill is not the vessel. Oratory and the sensational are not of the Spirit. If you asked every one in the town to come to hear the gospel preached, I could not object. You are the vessel of the Holy Spirit. A placard on a dead wall is not the vessel, and remember that the individual body is the only instrumental means the Spirit has here; for He is against the world in all its organisation and machinery. Confine yourself to the only instrumental means (the bodies of the saints), and I cannot object; but the moment you swerve from that, you attempt to enlist into the service of the Spirit that which is incongruous to Him, because it is of the world that rejected Christ. Now the Holy Spirit and the world can never coalesce; they are more distinct than fire and water. He has come to reside here in the individual temple, and in the collective temple. He wants no help from any one. He uses His temples for the glory of Christ.

I may not approve of what the individual does, but to his own Master he stands or falls. When I see him using the world to co-operate with him in the Lord’s work, I am at issue with him, even though I might attend his meetings. The woman of divination seemed to be quite a help to Paul, but he refused it. I seek to have such confidence in the organisation and power of the Holy Spirit, and His wonderful machinery, as in charge of Christ’s interests here, that I need not supplement it by men’s organisations, but simply wait on Him, and learn from Him how to be in concert with Him.