. Ten Pound Christians by J. R. Miller. So he called ten of
his servants and gave them ten pounds. Put this money to work,
he said, until I come back. Luke 19.13. We are doing business in this
world for Christ. Each one of us has something
of his, a pound, which he has entrusted to us to trade with
as his agent. Our life itself, with all its
powers, its endowments, its opportunities, its privileges, its blessings,
its possibilities, is our pound. Our life is not our own. We are
not in this world merely to have a good time for a few years.
Life is a trust. We are not done with it either
when we have lived it through to its last day. We must render
an account of it to Him who gave it to us. Our business is to
gather gains through our trading with our Lord's money. We are
required to make the most that is possible of our life. The
first came forward and said, Master, your pound has earned
ten more pounds, Luke 19, 16. We always find a few of these
ten-pound Christians among the followers of Christ. They are
those Christians who from the very beginning through divine
grace strive to reach the best things attainable in life. They
are not content with being merely saved from sin's guilt, with
being mere members of the church. They make their consecration
to Christ complete, keeping nothing back. They set their ideal of
obedience to their Lord at the mark of perfectness, and are
not slacking their striving until they reach the mark in heaven.
They seek to follow Christ entirely, fully, with their whole heart. They accept every duty without
regard to its cost. They seek to be like Christ,
imitating Him in all the elements of His character. They give their
whole energy to the work and service of Christ. They lie,
like John, on the Master's bosom, and their souls are struck through,
as it were, with the Master's loving spirit. These ten-pound
Christians grow at last into a Christ-likeness, a spiritual
beauty, and a power of usefulness and influence, by which they
are set apart among Christians, shining with brighter luster
than other stars in the galaxy of the church. Their one pound
has made ten more pounds. Their high spiritual attainment
has been won by their diligent and wise use of the one pound
with which they began.