nder
for service, not for idleness. In military usage surrender often means
being kept in enforced idleness and under close guard. But this is not
like that. It is all up on a much higher plane. Jesus has every man's
life planned. It always awes me to recall that simple tremendous fact.
With loving strong thoughtfulness He has thought into each of our lives,
and planned it out, in whole, and in detail. He comes to a man and
says, "_I know_ you. I have been _thinking_ about you." Then very
softly--"I--_love_--you. I _need_ you, for a plan of Mine. _Please_ let
Me have the control of your life and all your power, for My plan." It is a
surrender for service.
It is _yoked_ service. There are two bows or loops to a yoke. A yoke in
action has both sides occupied, and as surely as I bow down My head and
slip it into the bow on one side--I know there is _Somebody else_ on the
other side. It is yoked living now, yoked fellowship, yoked service. It is
not working _for_ God now. It is working _with_ Him. Jesus never sends
anybody ahead alone. He treads down the pathway through every thicket,
pushes aside the thorn-bushes, and clears the way, and then says with that
taking way of His, "Come along with Me. Let's go together, you and I."
A man got up in a meeting to speak. It was down in Rhode Island, out a bit
from Providence. He was a farmer, an old man. He had become a Christian
late in life, and this evening was telling about his start. He had been a
rough, bad man. He said that when he became a Christian even the cat knew
that some change had taken place. That caught my ear. It had a genuine
ring. It seemed prophetic of the better day coming for all the lower
animal creation. So I listened.
He said that the next morning after the change of purpose he was going
down to the village a little distance from his farm. He swung along the
road, happy in heart, singing softly to himself, and thinking about the
Saviour. All at once he could feel the fumes coming out of a saloon ahead.
He couldn't see the place yet, but his keen trained nose felt it. The
odors came out strong, and gripped him.
He said he was frightened, and wondered how he would get by. He had never
gone by before, he said; always gone in; but he couldn't go in now. But
what to do, that was the rub. Then he smiled, and said, "I remembered, and
I said, 'Jesus, you'll have to come along and help me get by, I never can
by myself.'" And then in his simple, illiterate wa
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