Tke Importance of Taking Lessons from the Master Soul-Winner of A ll Times
By REV. J O H N M A C NEIL
O NE thing about the Master as a Soul-winner that strikes me is that in His working, He is con tent to deal with the individual. The woman at the well, Zaccheus, the tax gatherer, one fisherman, another fisher man, another fisherman, John, Philip, Nathaniel, Andrew, one after another, not in formal ways, not in gatherings. The Master as a Soul-winner is a rebuke to many. He did not ask for meetings nor committees. Oh, dear friends, if Christians would only begin to copy the Master. When you meet people in the same neighborhood going to the well for water, to the shop for food, do as He did— say a word and it will bring on another one and He will be behind it. But we don’t do it. It is a very prac tical thing if we would only take up the idea. If we went on as He did, with the eye in our head and the word on our tongue for salvation— in a natural, in dividual, true way— it would tell. Be fore forty-eight hours things would be gin to mend in a way which all your organizing could not accomplish. I want not your organizing. I am tired of it. I don’t find much about it in Christ or in Paul’s epistles. He had one formula with a very simple illustration of the Gospel. I sometimes think he would take those three crosses—Christ in the center, a dying man in sin on one side, a man dying out of sin into life on the other side. He would tell the people they were either one side or the other and fasten their gaze on the central cross. Look at Levi. Could there be a more unlikely specimen? I suppose that many of us who are, through God’s grace,
soul winners, if we had seen this man busy at the public place, at official duty, taking taxes and giving receipts, would have said, “ Well, now, I saw that man in the meeting last night; he looked interested— but we must be wise —we, must beware of zeal without dis cretion.” We get so wise and cautious — on the wrong side of things. We say: “ There is that tax gatherer. I would like to have a word with him, but not now. It would only scare him, and I would stand in my own light.” Talk that to me, and you may, but I am deal ing with the Master, and I will show you how to be a soul winner. You will need to work. You will need to risk comfort. You will need to be a fool for Christ’s sake. The trouble with us all is that we want to be so wise for Christ’s sake, and wisdom and prudence have become a drug on the market and no takers. Ev erything must be done decently and in order. But all that is torn to pieces when the Master Soul-winner goes up to a man in his office in the morning. Ven ture a bit. Go ahead! Why be so mod est? ph, man, get some snap and heart. I often say when I look at some peo ple on Sunday, “Why do you look so wise and respectable and grave and dig nified?” and I feel to be faithful we should preach a message that is rather rough on edge— not a smooth message. When I see people looking so gruesome and grave, I think—-you are overdoing wise as you are looking; you are over doing it and somebody should come and give you a sharp word.
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