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Charaters
of Preachers
FOUR
GOOD WORKERS.
“ Borne of four” (Mark
2:3).
Four men
bringing one no Christ. We are not told who these men were
nor where they came
from
but their action is recorded in the imperishable Word of God. These four
men man may be taken as an illustration of four things that are essential in
seeking to bring others in contact with Christ: namely
faith
sympathy
and
perseverance.
Ⅰ. Prayer. Prayer is the hand that opens the door of heaven
and lets
out the power of God. The prayer of faith
and the Spirit of God
are linked
together like the yoked oxen that are ploughing in the field. “When they had
prayed the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 4:3). There is so little power in the
Church
because there is so little prayer.
Ⅱ. Faith. “ When Christ saw their faith He said unto the sick
” ＆c.(verse 5). If prayer is the hand that opens the door of
blessing
faith is the hand that receives the blessing
and not for itself
merely
but for others. This is not the only instance in the gospels where
Christ blessed others for the faith’s sake of the one pleading on their behalf.
The Syro-Phenecian woman’s daughter was healed for her mother’s faith’s sake
(Matt.15:28)
and the centurion and his servant is another case in point
(Matt.8:10).
Ⅲ. Sympathy. If the wind of declamation is blown upon any soul
it but
makes that one draw the cloak of indifference around him
but if the sun of
Christian sympathy
the compassion of Christ
beams upon the unsaved one
he
will soon throw off the cloak of indifference
and open up his mind to you (see
Aesop’s fable of the wind and the sun).
Ⅳ. Perseverance. I saw a fishing-boat recently sailing up Loch
Strivven in Scotland
but it had to tack as the wind was against it. So often
in Christian work the unsaved will raise a wind of objections
let us not give
up in consequence
but use the objections as helps
and thus perseveringly use
our opponents to attain our desired end.
── F.E. Marsh《Five Hundred Bible Readings》