THE RULE FOR A SERVANT IS SERVICE FIRST NO. 1
THE RULE FOR A SERVANT IS SERVICE FIRST NO. 1
A man with a family is evidently bound to consider for their welfare, and to provide for them, and I believe you can look to God to bless you in this line. On the other hand, it is as plain as possible that if the servant of the Lord goes to a place seeking something else besides service, he will not find a field for service there; he may find what his duty to others enjoined him to seek; but if his heart remains true for service, he will find it, as a rule, somewhere else, and not in the place where another object had led him. I may, like Aquila, be driven out of Rome, and I may settle at Corinth, and my business and service for the Lord will go on together; but the rule for a servant is service first, and everything else secondary. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier, but if a man with a heart to serve, and gifted to serve, sees that it is his duty to go to a place for the benefit of his family, I think he must submit; he is not quite free to choose his path; but if it be not necessity but advantage which influences him in the step, he surely will suffer both as to service and as to the supposed advantage; and here the dear brother whose counsel you refer to suffered very peculiarly. He went to ———— in order to educate his son at the university, and when his education was finished the son died! and the beloved father was never accepted in service there as he was elsewhere, and as his gift entitled him to be. If I go to a place to serve the Lord, and He has led me there, He will provide what is necessary for me there. If I am already under bonds I must respect them; and the Lord will graciously overrule,
[p. 140] if, as I have said, necessity, and not advantage or merely worldly motives, influence me. I can see nothing in scripture to warrant the idea that some entertain that you may settle where you like, and that the Lord will then open to you a field of service there, or that because there are some saints in the place that one might be of use to, that is reason enough to sanction one’s settling there.... If you have a charge now, and fill an important niche, you will agree with me that you can hardly surrender it without being assured that the Lord has provided another to undertake it, though this He will assuredly do, if it be right for you to move.... I comfort myself that if you do move we may see more of you — the Lord enlarging your heart and energies for His people outside.... All I fear is the easy way saints choose their localities in this day, and seem to think the cloud must follow them, instead of their waiting for the guidance of the Lord.
I think I may say that I only seek your real welfare, and the more you are blessed and favoured of the Lord, the more thankful I shall be. May His blessing abundantly fill your heart, and may you in everything do His will.