What Will You Risk to Be a Pioneer for God?

Until the church–the people of God–have explored all the ideas that are in the divine mind for the propagation of His kingdom in the earth, somebody must always be receiving new light and making new departures, and there has never been a single instance in the history of the church in which this has been done without nearly the whole of that generation raising a hue and cry against it.

Yet how would it be possible for God to bring about a revolution–a true revival–a grand aggressive movement of Christianity, without giving new light and calling somebody to some path in advance of all that has gone before?

And what does it matter who? Whether it is Peter or John or Martin Luther or George Fox or John Wesley or William Booth? What does it matter, as long as God does it?

But this requires that somebody lead the way–go on in advance. Will you be content to go in advance? Will you endure the hardness of a pioneer? Can you bear the ridicule and gibes of your fellowman? Dare you go where the Holy Spirit leads and leave Him to look after the consequences?

If so, you will have a harvest of precious souls; you will shine as the stars forever; but if you draw back, His soul will have no pleasure in you. The Lord help you! Step out onto the divine love that alone is able among the waves to bear up your little boat–able to make you more than a conqueror. Oh, step out–follow, follow, follow–do not be afraid!

WALKING ALONE The only thing you must do is count the cost, for the possession of divine love often necessitates walking in a lonely path. Not merely in opposition and persecution, but alone in it. Jesus, who was the personification of divine love, stands out as our great example.

He was emphatically alone, and of the people there was none with Him. Even the disciples whom He had drawn nearest to Him and to whom He had tried to communicate most of His thought and spirit, were so behind that He often had to reprove them and to lament their obtuseness and lack of sympathy.

In the greatness of His love, Jesus had to go forward into the darkness of Gethsemane. He was alone while the disciples slept, and then He went all alone to the Judgment Hall. He stood alone before Pilate. On the cross He hung unaccompanied–alone!

As it was with the Master, so it has been with all those whom God has called to go in advance of their race. It was so with Paul, and it has commonly been so with those whom God has called to extraordinary paths. For John to have a revelation of things shortly to come to pass, he had to go alone to the Isle of Patmos. For Paul to hear unspeakable words, he had to go alone into the third heaven and not be allowed even to communicate what he saw and heard when he came down. In advance of other saints, he of necessity had to go alone.

Similarly, when God has called some of His other followers to an out-of-the-way path, they have had to go alone. Superior love necessitates a lonely walk.

You shrink and say, “That seems hard.” Yes, I know. The fact remains that superior love necessitates, in some measure, a lonely walk, because it is only they who thus love to whom the Lord tells His secrets. If you want to ask a confidential question and get a confidential answer, you must be on the bosom of your Master. You won’t be able to do it at a distance.

Then when He gives to any soul superior light to its fellows, and that soul follows the light, it necessarily entails a path in advance of its fellows. Unless he can inspire and encourage them to follow, he must go on alone.

FACING OPPOSITION Peter faced this dilemma when God gave him the vision of the sheet with all its unclean contents and told him, “‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat'” (Acts 10:13, NKJV). Peter understood from the vision that his own plan to reach the Jews with the gospel was not the fullness of God’s plan for the extension of His kingdom and that God wanted him to go to the Gentiles. He determined that his business was to follow the Lord’s directions in spite of his own “ifs” and “buts,” and he went on to carry out the divine direction.

The church, aghast, as usual, at anything new, was down on it. This new church–which had only just itself been brought to God by a new Savior, a new revelation, a new call and a new faith–was down on Peter and summoned him before a council to answer for his conduct (see Acts 11:1-3).

He told them about his vision in the truthful simplicity of a man of God, and thank God, they had sense enough–yes, and love enough–to accept his explanations and to glorify God (vv. 4-18). Would to God we could get as much sense and charity these days!

You see, the church tends to be down on all the Peters who dare to do anything out of the jog-trot line. You may reason ever so urgently and show them that the old measures are not enough for everybody, that there is a great mass of outlying population that they do not reach; you may show them that these new measures of yours are quite as lawful as their old measures, and that, probably, they would be a great deal more useful, and moreover, that they have been borne in upon you by the Holy Spirit and that you feel as if there is a fire in your bones urging you to go and try them; yet they will not hold their peace and glorify God but will loose their tongues and vilify you.