Finding The Balance

"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witness" (1 Timothy 6: 12).

What my worth to God in public is; what I am in private. For many great men of faith fighting the good fight of the faith took a great toll on themselves, their families and friends. We are called to fight the good fight but not without balance for if you are doing great things in public and abandoning your duties at home then the whole counsel of God is not within you and you are out of balance. Who are you doing your service to God for? Yourself, misplaced zeal, those are the questions that need answers. Here is an example:

Great men boast of great strengths, but they can also harbor great faults. Charles T. Studd, one of England's most famous cricket players, was converted in 1883 through D.L. Moody's influence. He developed a deep friendship with six other young men and they offered themselves en masse to Hudson Taylor for missionary service in China. the "Cambridge Seven" sailed from England and arrived in Shanghai on March 18, 1885. 

Studd set passionately to work, adopting Chinese clothes and customs and laboring to exhaustion for souls. On December 5 he turned 25 and legally gained control of a large inheritance. He gave it all to the Lord's work, for he had found a greater wealth. "I cannot tell you," he later said, "what joy it gave me to bring the first soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. I have tasted almost all the pleasures this world can give. Those pleasures were as nothing compared to the joy that saving of that one soul gave me."

Stud later poured himself into India, then Africa. He once said, "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him." He toiled day and nigh, 18 hours at a stretch, with no meals except what he gulped down while working, and no vacations.

But his zeal overwhelmed those around him, leading to stress and broken relationships. His wife, often ill and lonely, was abandoned in England for years at a time while Studd was overseas. He expected his associates to work as he did, and he grew critical of those who didn't. He wrote a book deploring lethargy as he saw it among Christians, and its title offended his supporters--D.C.D., standing for "Don't Care a Damn." He began treating his exhaustion and disorders with morphine. And when he died in Africa in 1931, he was broken in body and spirit.

But his fruit remains. The organization he founded, Worldwide Evangelism Crusade, is still sending out missionaries and changing the world. Despite his faults, Studd remains as one of our most passionate missionary heroes.

Be zealous for the Lord, He is our salvation and for the world, keep in balance, check your motives that is the counsel given to us in Proverbs; "All a man's ways seem innocent to him but motives are weighed by the LORD" (16:2).

Daily Prayer:

Lord, I thank you for your Word, for it gives me understanding and wisdom. I desire to be zealous for you in carrying out your Great Commission, to be a faithful ambassador, a messenger of reconciliation, yet keep me in balance, check me when I am not. I will be obedient and leave the consequences up to You.    Amen