WORK OUT WHAT GOD WORKS IN - F.B.Meyer

Now, I come to my next point. When God works in, you must work out. ” Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is GOD that worketh in you.”
You must work out what God works in, and you must do it with fear and trembling. Let me explain. Suppose a great artist is training a young student. He says to that student:
“I am coming into your studio to help you tomorrow from nine till twelve.”
It is a wonderful thing that this illustrious artist should spend three hours with that obscure student; and the man fears. He does not fear the teacher, but he fears lest he will miss a minute of the teacher’s help. He trembles, not because he dreads the teacher, but because he is a miser to use up every hint, every suggestion, every touch. O! he trembles lest he should lose anything. So, dear soul, listen. The great God has come into your life to live there, and He says to you: “I am going to save you from the power of sin.” How careful you ought to be! When God speaks, obey. When God gives a hint, instantly act upon it. Be very fearful lest by any word or act of yours you spoil and thwart and put back God’s. work in your life. Work out with fear and trembling.
God in you will work to will, and then God in you will work to do what He wills. First, God works to will. He does not work to make you feel, because feeling ends in smoke so often. God does not work in you to think, because you think and think again But God works in you to will. That is, there rises up in your heart a desire which becomes at last a purpose to be free. No one knows it, no one guesses it; but in your soul there rises up the will.
God is always definite. The devil confounds us by bringing a number of points before us, but when God deals with us He deals with one point at a time. He takes one sin, one failure, one incumbrance or weight. When you are at the communion table, when you are alone, when you are reading your Bible, this one thing comes up. God works away there. Now meet Him there, and He will work in you to will against it. That is the first thing. That was so with me.
About seventeen years ago, when God began to work with me, there was a thing in my life no one knew; but in my silent hour God worked in me to will that it should cease. I was so weak I could not put it away.
Blessed be God, the willing and the doing are from Him, and by faith you look to Him to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.
I have found God works thus. He leads me to see a thing to be wrong, and then I put my will against it. Whenever it comes towards me, God says:
“It is coming. Hide, hide in the cleft of the Rock. I see it coming.”
It is like a chick,—a hawk,–the mother; I run-I hide–the devil finds me in Christ. And if I fall through not trusting Him to keep me, He works in me to be sorry, and I am sorry; and then He works in me to confess.
Two years ago, one Sunday morning, on coming down to my church, I found that the verger had done a very foolish thing, for vergers (though they live in the church) are not immaculate. I lost my temper. I was going to preach within a quarter of an hour. As a result of losing my temper, I was as far out of fellowship with God as a man may get. My officers were all coming in to pray with me before I entered the pulpit. I did not know what to do. I knew I had fallen. I knew I dared not preach God’s gospel until I was right with man, because one cannot be more right with God than with his brother man; one’s position as a man is the guage and indicator of one’s position before God. I thought they would all think that I was crazy, but I rang the bell, called the verger in, and said to him;
“You did an uncommonly unwise thing just now–I cannot take that back: but that did not exonerate me for losing my temper. Forgive me.”
The man looked more startled than pleased, but that did not matter. I had done what was right, and my soul shot into the blue of God’s heaven again. God worked in me to confess.
A man loses his temper with his wife at breakfast. He goes down town. All the morning he wishes that he had not done it, and the Spirit of God in him says: “Tell her when you get home that you are sorry.”
No, we men are very tough material, and instead he says: “I will buy her a basket of strawberries.”
He comes with his little peace-offering. She, poor dear, understands it. She has lived long enough to know that he is only mortal, and she takes the offering as an apology. But he would have been a manlier and a happier and a more Christlike man if he had said:
” Wife, I am a minister, I am an elder, I am a good man really, but I was away from God, and the devil tripped me up. Forgive me, sweetheart, forgive me.”
That would be the best way. And when God works in you to confess, confess! Confess to man, to woman, to child, to servant, to Him; and His blood will wash you whiter than snow.
How long does it take between confession and forgiveness? When I was a boy at school and talked to the boy next to me, they sent me down to the bottom of the class, and it took me a month to work up. When you do wrong and confess it, God does not put you down and leave you to work up for a whole month, but on the spot, immediately, He forgives you and restores your soul, and puts you back where you were before you fell.
Only, dear soul, abide in Jesus. Let the Holy Ghost in you keep you abiding in Jesus, so that when Satan comes to knock at your door, Jesus will go and open it, and as soon as the devil sees the face of Christ looking through the door, he will turn tail like a whipped cur. Let Jesus live in your heart. Do you live in Jesus? When the devil comes, do not meet him yourself, but let Jesus meet him, and you stand behind Him. The Negro said: “When the devil comes to me, I always introduce him to his betters.” Put Jesus between you and the devil. Live in Christ. God will work in you. He will make you hate sin. He will make you loathe what you loved. He will deliver you deeper, ever deeper in your life, from the power and the love of sin. It may be a long process before the work is done, but He will keep you from known sin, and save you ever deeper down in your heart.
Oh, Thou who art able to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless before Thy glory “with exceeding joy, to Thee, Emmanuel, Christ, Son of God, lover of my soul, I yield my life, my soul, my all!

F.B.Meyer