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Text Sermons : R.A. Torrey : THE IMPORTANCE AND ADVANTAGES OF PERSONAL WORK

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In our study of the various forms of Christian
activity, we begin with "Personal Work," that
hand-to-hand dealing with men, women and children.
We begin with it because it is the simplest form
of Christian work, the kind that every one can do.
It is also the most effective method of winning
lost souls. The Apostle Peter was brought to Jesus
by the hand-to-hand work of his brother Andrew.
Andrew first found Christ himself, then he went to
Peter quietly and told him of his great find, and
thus he led Peter to the Savior he himself had
found. I do not know that Andrew ever preached a
sermon; if he did it is not recorded; but he did a
great day's work when he led his brother Peter to
Jesus. Peter preached a sermon that led to the
conversion of 3,000 people, but where would
Peter's great sermon have been if Andrew had not
first led him to Christ by quiet personal work?
Mr. Edward Kimball, a Boston business man, led D.
L. Moody, the young Boston shoe clerk, to the
Savior. Where would all Mr. Moody's wonderful work
for Christ have been if he himself had not been
led to the Savior by the faithful personal work of
his Sunday school teacher? I believe in preaching.
It is a great privilege to preach the Gospel, but
this world can be reached and evangelized far more
quickly and thoroughly by personal work than by
public preaching. Indeed, it can be reached and
evangelized only by personal work. When the whole
church of Jesus Christ shall rouse to its
responsibility and privilege in this matter, and
every individual Christian become a personal
worker, the evangelization of the world will be
close at hand. When the membership of any local
church shall rouse to its responsibility and
privilege in this matter, and each {10} member
become a personal worker in the power of the Holy
Spirit, a great revival will be close at hand for
the community in which that church is located.
Personal work is a work that wins but little
applause from men, but it accomplishes great
things for God.

There are many who think personal work beneath
their dignity and their gifts. A blind woman once
came to me and said, "Do you think that my
blindness will hinder me from working for the
Master?" "Not at all; it may be a great help to
you, for others seeing your blindness will come
and speak to you, and then you will have an
opportunity of giving your testimony for Christ,
and of leading them to the Savior." "Oh, that is
not what I want," she replied. "It seems to me a
waste of time when one might be speaking to five
or six hundred at once, just to be speaking to an
individual." I answered that our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ was able to speak to more than five
thousand at once, and yet He never thought
personal work beneath His dignity or His gifts.
Indeed, it was the work the Savior loved to do. We
have more instances of our Savior's personal work
recorded in the Gospels that of His preaching. The
one who is above personal work is above his
Master.

ITS ADVANTAGES.

Let us look at the advantages of personal work.

1. ALL CAN DO IT. In an average congregation there
are not more than four or five who can preach to
edification. It would be a great pity, too, should
all attempt to become preachers; it would be a
great blessing if all would become personal
workers. Any child of God can do personal work,
and all can learn to do effective personal work.
The mother who is confined at home by multiplicity
of home duties can still do personal work, first
of all with her own children, and then with the
servants in the home, with the butcher, the
grocer, the tramp who calls at the door, in fact,
with everybody who comes within reach. I once knew
a mother very gifted in the matter of bringing her
own children up in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord, who lamented that she could not do some
work for Christ. I watched this woman carefully,
and found that almost every one who came to the
house in any capacity was spoken to about the
Savior, and she was, in point of fact, doing {11}
more for Christ in the way of direct evangelistic
work than most pastors.

Even the one shut up at home by sickness can do
personal work. As friends come to the sick bed, a
word of testimony can be given for Christ, or even
an extended conversation can be held. A little
girl of twelve, the child of very poor parents,
lay dying in the city of Minneapolis. She let her
light shine for the Master, and spoke among others
to a godless physician, to whom, perhaps, no one
else had ever spoken about Christ. A poor girl in
New York City, who was rescued from the slums and
died a year or two afterwards, was used of God to
lead about one hundred men and women to Christ,
while lying upon her dying bed.

Even the servant girl can do effective personal
work. Lord Shaftesbury, the great English
philanthropist, was won to Christ in a godless
home by the effective work of a nurse girl.

Traveling men have unusually good opportunities
for doing personal work, as they travel on the
trains from town to town, as they stop in one
hotel after another and go from store to store. A
professional nurse once came into my Bible class
in Chicago, and at the close of the meeting
approached me and said: "I was led to Christ by
Mr.--- [a traveling man connected with a large
wholesale house]. I was in a hotel parlor, and
this gentleman saw me and walked across the parlor
and asked me if I was a Christian, and when I told
him I was not, he proceeded at once to show me the
way of life. I was so startled and impressed to
find a traveling man leading others to Christ that
I accepted Him as my Savior then and there. He
told me if I ever came to Chicago to come to your
Bible class." I have watched this woman for years
since, and she herself is a most devoted Christian
and effective worker.

How enormous and wonderful and glorious would be
the results if all Christians should begin to be
active personal workers to the extent of their
ability! Nothing else would do so much to promote
a revival in any community, and in the land at
large. Every Pastor should urge this duty upon his
people, train them for it, and see that they do
it.

2. IT CAN BE DONE ANYWHERE. There are but few
places where one can preach. There is no place
where one cannot do personal {12} work. How
often, as we pass factories, engine houses,
lodging houses and other places where crowds are
gathered, do we wish that we might get into them
and preach the Gospel, but generally this is
impossible, but it is altogether possible to go in
and do personal work. Furthermore, we can do
personal work on the street, whether street
meetings are allowed or not. We can do personal
work in the homes of the poor and in the homes of
the rich, in hospitals, workhouses, jails, station
houses, and all sorts of institutions -- in a
word, everywhere.

3. IT CAN BE DONE AT ANY TIME. The times when we
can have preaching services and Sunday schools are
quite limited. As a rule, in most communities, we
cannot have services more than two or three days
in the week, and only three or four hours in the
day, but personal work can be done seven days in
the week, and any time of day or night. Some of
the best personal work done in this country in the
last twenty years has been done on the streets at
midnight and after midnight. Those who love souls
have walked the streets looking for wanderers, and
have gone into dens of vice seeking the lost
sheep, and hundreds upon hundreds of them have
thus been found.

4. IT REACHES ALL CLASSES. There are large classes
of men that no other method will reach. There are
the shut-ins who cannot get out to church, the
street-car men, the policemen, railroad
conductors, sleeping-car men, firemen, the very
poor and the very rich. Some cannot and others
will not attend church or cottage meeting or
mission meeting, but personal work can reach them
all.

5. IT HITS THE MARK. Preaching is necessarily
general; personal work is direct and personal.
There is no mistaking who is meant, there is no
dodging the arrow, there is no possibility of
giving what is said away to some one else. Many
whom even so expert a Gospel preacher as Mr. Moody
has missed have been afterwards reached by
personal work.

6. IT MEETS THE DEFINITE NEED, AND EVERY NEED OF
THE PERSON DEALT WITH. Even when men are aroused
and convicted, and perhaps converted, by a sermon,
personal work is necessary to bring out into clear
light and into a satisfactory experience one whom
the sermon has thus aroused, convicted and
converted. {13}

7. IT AVAILS WHERE OTHER METHODS FAIL. One of my
best workers told me a few weeks ago that she had
attended church for years, and had wanted to
become a Christian. She had listened to some of
the best-known preachers, and still was unsaved,
but the very first inquiry meeting she went into
she was saved because some one came and dealt with
her personally.

8. IT PRODUCES VERY LARGE RESULTS. There is no
comparison whatever between what will be effected
by good preaching and what will be effected by
constant personal work. Take a church of one
hundred members; such a church under an excellent
pastor would be considered as doing an
exceptionally good work if on an average fifty
were added annually to this membership. But
suppose that that church was trained to do
personal work, and that fifty of the one hundred
members actually went at it. Certainly one a month
won to Christ by each one would not be a large
average. That would be six hundred a year instead
of the fifty mentioned above. A church of many
members, with the most powerful preaching
possible, that depends upon the minister alone to
win men to Christ by his preaching, would not
accomplish anything like what would be
accomplished by a church with a comparatively poor
preacher, where the membership generally were
personal workers.





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