“Our plain and cheering duty is to go forward—to scatter the seed—to believe and wait.
Yet must there be expectancy as well as patience. The warrant of success is assured—not only as regards an outward reformation—but a spiritual change of progressive and universal influence.
The fruit of ministerial labor is not indeed always visible in its symptoms, nor immediate in its results, nor proportioned to the culture. Faith and patience will be exercised—sometimes severely so.
But after a pains-taking, weeping seed-time, we shall bring our sheaves with rejoicing, and lay them up on the altar of God, ‘That the offering up of them might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost” (Psa. 126:5-6; Rom. 15:16). Meanwhile we must beware of saying, ‘Let him make speed, and hasten in his work that we may see it’ (Isa. 5:19).
The measure in the time or with the Lord. We must let him alone with his own work. Ours is the care of service—His is the care of success. The ‘Lord of the harvest’ must determine when, and what, and where the harvest shall be.”
Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry with an Inquiry into the Causes of its Inefficiency, (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 2009), p. 76.
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