THREAD FOR A WEB BEGUN by J. R. Miller There is a secret of
victorious living, which, if people knew it, would make all
life easier for them. It may be stated thus, that,
as we take up any duty, and go forward with it, we shall receive
the strength we need to do it. There are several divine promises
that give this assurance. One reads, As your days, so shall
your strength be. Deuteronomy 33 verse 25 This
seems to mean that the help which God gives varies according to
the necessity of the particular day. When we have abundance of
ordinary human strength, we do not need so much special divine
help, and God then gives less. Really, it is always God's strength
that we have, whether it is what we call natural, or whether it
comes in a supernatural way. When we have human friends about
us, with sweet companionship, we do not need so much the revealing
of the divine presence and the companionship of the unseen friend. But when we lose the human aid,
then we need the divine more deeply, and in the loneliness
God makes himself known to us as never before. So it is in
all our experiences. God fits His blessing to our
days. When we are faint, He increases
strength. When we are sorrowful, He gives
comfort. When we are in danger, He grants
protection. When we are weary, He gives rest. as your days, so shall your strength
be. Another of Christ's promises
reads, My grace is sufficient for you. Every word of this assurance
shines with radiant light. My grace is sufficient for you. It is Christ's grace that is
sufficient. We know that He has all divine
fullness, and therefore we are sure that no human need can ever
exhaust His power to give help. My grace is sufficient for you. It is Christ's grace that is
sufficient. If it were anything else but
grace, it might not give us such comfort. Grace is undeserved
favor, goodness shown to the unworthy. We deserve nothing,
for we are sinners. but it is Christ's grace which
is sufficient, and so we can claim it. My grace is sufficient
for you. It is present tense, is sufficient. Christ is always speaking personally
to the one who is in any need, and saying, My grace is sufficient
for you. My grace is sufficient for you. The word sufficient is one whose
meaning expands and amplifies with the measure of the need.
No necessity is so small as not to be included, and none is so
great as to go beyond the capacity of the blessing that is promised. My grace is sufficient for you. The grace is sufficient for each
of his redeemed children. For you, the promise runs. But there are divine words also
which imply that the supply of blessing that we receive will
depend upon ourselves. God's people in ancient times
were commanded to cross the Jordan, the promise being that the stream
would divide for them. Yet the waters would not have
parted for them if they had not gone forward in obedience and
faith. As a matter of fact, it was only
when the feet of the priests, walking in advance, were wetted
in the rushing floods, that the stream began to sink away. When Jesus was ready to send
forth his disciples to bear his gospel, his command was, Go into
all the world. Then came the promise, and, lo,
I am with you all the days. The promise is very precious,
but we cannot separate it from the command. We cannot have this
blessed presence unless we are in our own way, to the measure
of our own ability, seeking to make disciples of all nations. It is when we go out in his name
that he will be with us. This is the unvarying law of
spiritual blessing and good. Life lies before us, with its
burdens, its duties, its responsibilities, its struggles, its perplexities. It does not come to us all in
one piece. God breaks our years into months
and weeks and days. and never gives us more than
just a little at a time, never more than we can bear or do for
the day, then if we take up the present duty or burden we shall
always have strength to do it. If we have enough of our own
natural strength, and that is God's strength too, He does not
need to give us special strength, for why should anything so precious
as strength be wasted? But, if we do not have strength
of our own, sufficient for the work or struggle, we need not
falter, but should go on, just as if we had omnipotence in our
arm. For the promise is that if we
honour God by obeying Him, though the task be impossible to our
ability, He will honour us by giving us all the help we need. The river will surely open when
he has bidden us to cross it, if only we move on as if there
were no river. The bread will surely be given
when we enter the wilderness, following the divine leading,
if only we go on as if we had abundance of provision. But we
must not forget that the promised blessing depends upon our faith
and obedience. If we do not begin the task that
seems impossible, if we wait to receive the help before we
will begin it, the help will never come. If we do not begin
our march toward the river, waiting until it opens, it will not open
at all. If we do not enter upon the struggle,
waiting for strength to be given for the battle before we accept
it, we shall never get the strength. And old Proverbs says, Get your
spindle and your distaff ready, and God will send the flax. Yes,
but he will not send the flax, unless we get the spindle and
distaff ready. We must do our part, thus proving
our faith, or God will not do what he has promised, for his
promise is conditional. Another old proverb says, For
a web begun, God sends the thread. We must take up the scant bundle
of threads we have, and begin our weaving, confident that the
Lord will provide threads as we go on, enough to finish the
web. He will never put his threads
into folded, waiting hands. Now, the truth is that God has
given them enough to begin with, and that is all he will give
at first. There were only five barley loaves,
and there were five thousand hungry people. What were these
among so many? But, for the web begun, God sent
the thread that day. There was only a little meal
in the barrel, and a little oil in a cruise, and there were years
of famine yet to be passed through. But again, for the web begun,
God sent the thread. The teaching is for us, and it
is one of the most practical lessons we can learn. Put your
hands to the tasks that are surely yours, never asking whether you
are able to do them or not, and not waiting for God to provide
all the strength or all the material you will need before you begin
to do them. Whatever is your duty must be
done, no matter how far beyond your strength it may be. It is
yours to begin. It is God's duty to help you
through, and He will if you honor Him by trusting Him. Those who
live lives of great usefulness have always begun with the little
they had. Oftentimes it was a very small
capacity for helping others, but they began in a quiet way,
doing what they could. Then, as they used the gift they
had, it grew in their hands until they filled a large sphere of
usefulness, touching many lives with the blessing of their helpfulness. For a web begun, God sent the
thread. The same law of human diligence
and divine blessing prevails in the building up of character.
Ten lepers cried to Jesus for healing. He answered, bidding
them go and show themselves to the priest. This was what the
law required lepers to do, after they had been cured, when the
priest would give them a certificate of health and cleanness, permitting
them to return again to society. These lepers were not cured,
their bodies showed no mark of healing, but they promptly obeyed
the Master's word, and, as they went, they were cleansed. There
are those who long for a beautiful life, for a transformed character,
but it seems to them they never can attain to such renewal, they
are so full of faults and blemishes. But if they begin to follow Christ,
starting with the little fragment of Christ-likeness which their
hands can pick up, God will help them and they will grow at last
into rich beauty of soul. just so, get the victory over
the one temptation of the hour, and that will be the first thread
in a web of complete victoriousness. Get one little line of loveliness
into your disposition, and that will be the beginning of a spirit
which at last will include whatever things are lovely. For a web
begun, God will send the thread. There is a beautiful Eastern
fable of a child walking beside the sea, who saw a bright spangle
lying in the sand. She stooped down and picked it
up, and found that it was attached to a fine thread of gold. As she drew this out of the sand,
there were other bright spangles on it. She drew up the gold thread
and wound it about her neck and around her head and her arms
and body, until from head to foot she was covered with the
bright threads of gold and sparkled with the brilliance of the silver
spangles. So it is when we lift out of
God's Word an ornament of beauty, to put into our life. We find
that other fragments of loveliness, all bound together on the golden
chain of love, and are attached to the one we have taken up. Then, as we draw up the chain,
and entwine it about our neck, and weave it into a web to make
a garment for our soul, we find that it is endless. Infinite
as God himself is the abundance of the lovely things that we
may draw out of the treasury of his grace, to deck our life
with beauty. For a web begun, God sends the
thread. This same law applies in the
learning of all life's lessons. The divine teaching is never
lacking. But we must ever begin the lesson
with the little we know. We must take the one step that
is plain to us, and then God will make plain the next step
for us, and the next, and the next. We must not demand to know
all the way before we will set out. We must trust Christ and
go on, even in the dark. We must never falter when there
seems to be no path. As we go on, it will open. As we do the will of God, we
shall know the teaching. When we begin the web, God will
send the threads to weave into the beautiful ending.