I feel that I would just like to say with others that I feel unworthy many times to be counted with such a noble people.
When I look back on my life, I wonder what the Lord saw in me that He picked me out from my friends and family. I feel thankful today that I was touched by the gospel, and that God was able to bring about some separation in my life.
I think I never come into a convention meeting that I [don’t] think of that hymn that we sang, “There is no gain but by a loss. Whenever you ripe fields behold waving to God their sheaves of gold, be sure some corn of wheat has died, some faithful life been crucified.”
I have been thinking since I looked over this crowd here, trying to picture in my mind when the first workers came to Queensland, but I know there was a beginning, and there was a pioneering.
My mind goes to the time when I had the privilege of going to one of the republics of West Africa, and it was pioneering when the first worker came as a stranger.
Wherever Jesus went He was pioneering.
Sometimes I have taken courage when we went to a new field, I thought it was like Ezekiel saw, the valley of dry bones, when we came to a city that was filled with people, that city that was so full of idols.
I think of my father going to pioneer, fifty miles from a town, and taking a little team of oxen, and a plough, starting to cultivate, hoping one day to have a harvest. In the pioneering of the Gospel, it is like that.
We come today and see a field of green; very rewarding, but we knew someone had suffered, wept and prayed, before there would be this crowd of people here today.
I have been thinking just a little recently about the church of God; it grows in two ways.
It grows in number and it also grows in spiritual quality, and it would be that a little church wouldn’t be enlarged in number in a year, but that church could grow spiritually, and could grow in quality.
I am confident that God is just as anxious about quality than in quantity, and perhaps more so.
My father used to say, “Don’t be just taken up with quantity, but quality. Quality in the animals and quality in the ground.”
God is anxious that there would be good quality.
My father had a little fruit garden in his later years, and some years he wouldn’t plant an extra tree, but that year he could have better fruit than the year before. He was interested in that.
I can say that I visited my father and saw the interest that he had in these trees; he loved every one of them.
He showed me one day a large tree loaded with cherries, and another tree loaded with plums. He didn’t say very much about them.
But we went down the garden and stopped at a little tree about 1 metre high, and he said, “Look here”.
There was just a little handful of fruit there.
He said, “This is the first fruit.”
It brought him just as much joy to see the first fruit as the abundance of fruit on the other tree.
God doesn’t expect too much of us, but just what is reasonable.
The next year my father expected to find more fruit on that little tree.
God comes along looking for fruit.
He is looking for better fruit as time goes on.
I knew some friends in Canada; I was visiting those brothers in the home, and I had to say that I could see the fruit of the spirit ripening in their lives. It seemed to be mellowing.
It is nice when this can go on in our lives. A little more mellowing of the spirit as the years go past.
I had in mind to speak to you of a little study I made 25 years ago.
That is, what the New Testament teaches of what we can be and what we can do for one another.
I will give you the passages.
First of all – love one another, John 13-34.
Submit yourselves one to the other – Ephesians 5-21.
Confess your faults one to another – James 5-16.
Forgive one another – Ephesians 4-32.
Be kind one to another – Ephesians 4-32
Pray for one another – James 5-10
Lie not one to another – Colossians 3-9.
Speak no evil one to another – James 4-11.
Comfort ye one another – 1 Thess. 4.18
Serve one another – Galatians 5-13.
Have compassion one to another – 1 Peter 3-8
Consider one another – Hebrews 10-24
Forbearing one another – Ephesians 4-2.
Bear ye one another’s burdens – Galatians 6-2.
I have spoken of some of these things at various times, but not as a subject until recently.
Love has come at the top of the list.
When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment in the law, He said, “Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart.” The second is like unto it. “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
There are many, many laws to try to keep peace in the world.
There were man’s laws in the O.T. covenant.
Jesus summed the whole thing up and put them into two – Love God and love your neighbour.
If this is taken care of, it seems that we will not have trouble with the rest of the things.
Paul said, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore it is the fulfilling of the law”.
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour – Jesus said that by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, by the love that you have one for the other.
These things are very practical and maybe I should tell you this the first year I was in the ministry, I ended up wishing I could have been a better companion.
The second year I ended up wishing I could have been a better companion.
A number of times since I have finished up the same.
I have proved some of these things for myself, and I would like to speak about three that are very important for fellowship, one with the other.
First is submission, then confession and forgiveness.
It is not so easy sometimes to submit, and it is not so easy sometimes to confess our wrongs.
There are times some people find it difficult to forgive.
I have never found it very difficult to forgive, when I think of all the Lord has forgiven me.
Sometimes I have found it difficult to go to my companion and tell him that I have been wrong, and done wrong.
Submitting to one another.
When I made a study so many years ago, I was in a special meeting and in this meeting, I was speaking of submitting one to another.
I gave an illustration saying that we don’t always think alike.
One thinks one way and another thinks another way, and there has to be a little submitting.
If one only submits 20% the other has to submit 80%.
If one submits 50% the other has only to submit 50%.
Just say that two people go into the same room to sleep at night, and one says, “Let’s leave the window open.”
And the other says, “no close the window.”
What are you going to do?
There were some sister workers smiling at that meeting, and the very thing happened the night before to them.
I didn’t ask those sisters how they kept the window. It was a touchy subject.
I knew both those sisters, and I don’t think they wanted to impose on one another.
I think they kept the window half-open.
I think there was a bending and a blending.
I was in the home of a couple one time, and the wife was continually having digs at her husband.
That brother 95% of the time, he had to do the submitting in that home. That was a picture of a lamb.
Confessing our faults.
One time I had a young companion that was very docile, very nice spirited boy, humble, first year in the work.
One evening I said something to him, and as soon as I had said it, I wished I had never said it.
Sometimes our little tongue gets us into trouble.
I couldn’t go to pray that night unless I went and talked to my companion.
Jesus said if you go to pray, or you go with the sacrifice, leave it at the altar, and if you remember your brother has something against you, you go and make it right with your brother.
I felt that my companion had reason for something against me.
I went to him and said, “You remember what I said a few minutes ago?”
I said, “I am sorry.”
He said, “That is nothing.”
I said, “In the world it could be nothing, but it is not Christ-like.”
The little confession relieved me, and it bound us together a little more.
One of the things that is very important is confessing our wrongs.
Sometimes it is difficult to say that I am wrong.
Then we speak about forgiveness.
Someone has said that forgiveness is free pardon for all wrongs.
I told about the time when my brother did some wrong to me, and I am going to tell my Mamma.
He pleaded, “Don’t go”, and I said, “Yes, I am going to tell Mamma.”
Finally, I said, “You give me that old pocket knife I gave you yesterday, and I won’t tell her’
That wasn’t free pardon, he had to pay for it.
Why should we want our brothers to pay, when we receive free pardon from the Lord?
Forgiveness sets our brother free.
We Sing in that hymn, “Teach me how to love, as thou hast first loved me. Oh, help me to forgive, as thou Lord hest forgiven.”
Another hymn said, “Help us to forgive and set our brother free”
If we don’t forgive our poor brother, he is not free and we are in bondage ourselves.
So, these three seemed to be the main ones I wanted to speak about.
Then there is kindness.
Kindness is understood in every language.
There are no scratches and no scars if you have been through kindness.
There was a young sister worker, and she was staying with friends, and she went up to her room before the older companion.
When the older companion went up later she found her young companion weeping.
She asked her why she was weeping, and the young companion said, “You are to kind to me.”
It had touched her so deeply.
She was raised in a home where her father was separated from her mother, and her father left with another woman. And the little girl stayed with her grandmother. That is where she came in contact with the truth.
Then she went back to live with her father, and there were drinking parties in that home.
Sometimes when she went to go to school in the morning, she would have to step over not only beer bottles, but also drunk people.
She went to the gospel meetings and she professed, but it was terrible circumstances for her to try to serve the Lord.
Later she went into the work.
Her up-bringing was so different from the kindness when she was in the work, that it touched her heart so deeply.
Praying for one another brings about a healthy church.
There was a little boy in a little church and another little girl in another family.
The little boy was kicked in the head by a horse, and he was in hospital lying unconscious.
The other mother in the other home said, “All we can do for Eddie is pray for him.”
The little Girl said, “I have prayed twice for him already.”
That little girl later made her choice, and she went into the ministry.
That was a beginning to praying for others.
I have been smitten sometimes in my own spirit, when I have been prompted in my spirit that I haven’t been praying for my companion as I should.
Lie not one to another.
I wouldn’t like to think that any of the Lord’s people would be lying to each other.
“Since you have put off the old man”.
It was the old man that did the lying.
That is not for the new man.
We are born again.
There was a man that made his choice in our meetings and became a very hearty man for the truth.
He told us that when he was a little boy there was a wall between their yard and the neighbours.
The neighbour had a plum tree that’s branches came into their yard.
One day when the plums were ripening the little boy fell into temptation and he got a big stick and got some down.
Then Poppa walked along and he said, “what are you doing?”
The boy said, “I am just picking up some of the plums off the tree.”
Poppa said, “Did you shake the tree?”
And the boy said, “Yes” because he didn’t want to tell a lie.
Then his dad said, “Take those plums and give them to the neighbour and tell him what happened.”
So, the little boy went over to the neighbour and said, “Here are some of the plums off your tree that fell in our yard.”
The neighbour said, “You Good little boy.”
An honest person will take sides against himself.
Sometimes we don’t just tell the whole truth.
Forbearing one another in love.
We all have little mannerisms of our own.
One of our older brothers used to call our little mannerisms idiosyncrasies – sometimes our mannerisms are idiots.
One of our brother workers came to me once and he said, “My companion has some queer ways. When I wash my teeth in the morning, I use a glass to rinse my mouth, and I put the glass down on the sink. My companion washes all the dishes and even the frying pan before he washes my glass.”
I told this brother, “If your companion doesn’t want to wash your glass until he washes the rest, don’ t make a problem out of that. Just wash the glass yourself after you finish washing your teeth.”
We don’t want to cause problems.
You will find you have plenty of opportunities this coming year to be kind to others.
You may find an opportunity someday to go and ask forgiveness.
You may find an opportunity to confess a little wrong, and if you have that spirit, don’t pass it up.
Those are the things that make for fellowship.
After I made this study, I concluded that I can make a practice of all these things.
I find that these are things that I should be doing for my companions.
I didn’t find that there was one thing that he should do for me.
One sister said that she found in her Bible that there was one thing her husband should do for her and that is he should love her.
It also says that the wife should submit to her husband.
Where it speaks about forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.
We have to persevere and make an effort.
Truth Archive 