Working with Him

My brother, if thou shalt win a soul by thy work, it is God’’s work; if thou shalt instruct the ignorant, thou dost it, but it is God that doeth it by thee if it be rightly done. Learn to acknowledge the hand of God, and yet do not draw back thine own. Learn to put out thine own hand, and yet to feel that it is powerless unless God make bare his arm. Combine in thy thoughts the need of the all-working God and the duty of thine own exertion.

Do not make the work of God an excuse for thine idleness, neither let thine earnest activity ever tempt thee to forget that power belongeth unto him. The Savior is a model to us in putting this just in the right form. It is God’’s work to open the blind eye; if the eye has been sealed in darkness from the birth no man can open it, God must do it; but yet the clay and the spittle must be used, and Siloam’’s pool must be resorted to, or the light will never enter the sightless eye.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Spur," delivered July 31, 1870. Image by Luis Argerich under Creative Commons License.