Last week we released part one of Live Like a Soldier, excerpts from Samuel Brengle’s book, The Soul Winner’s Secret. In part two, he talks about how to live with soldier-like, spirit-filled obedience to Jesus. Obedience that is willing, exact, and unafraid will produce the results God desires and bring Him glory.
This obedience must be exact. Saul lost his kingdom and his life because his obedience was only partial. (Samuel 15) So also did the prophet who warned the wicked King Jeroboam. (1 Kings 13)
“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” said Mary to the servants at the marriage of Cana, and when they obeyed Him, Jesus wrought His first miracle. And so He will work miracles today through His chosen people, if they will do whatever He saith.
The soul-winner must beware of quenching the blessed Spirit, and then he will find that it is not himself but the Spirit that speaks in him, so that he can say with Jesus, “The words that I speak, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works,” for does not Jesus say, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, that will I do”?
This obedience must be courageous. “Be not afraid of their faces,” said the Lord to Jeremiah.
[…]Let the soul-winner recognize that he is on picket duty for heaven [A picket is an old fashioned term for a soldier, or small unit of soldiers, placed in a forward position to provide warning of an enemy advance], and let him throw himself on heaven’s protection and rest in the assurance of his Heavenly Father’s care, and the utmost sympathy and support of Jesus, and do his duty courageously, saying with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Again and again I have comforted myself with the assurance of good King Jehoshaphat, “Deal courageously and the Lord shall be with the good,” and encouraged myself with the bold declaration of Peter to the enraged and outwitted Sanhedrin,
“We ought to obey God rather than men,” and measured myself by the self-forgetful words of Nehemiah, “Should such a man as I flee, and who is there that being as I am would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in.” (Nehemiah 6:11)
And of Paul: “Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”
And of the three Hebrew children: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king; but if not, O, king, be it known unto thee that we will not serve thy gods nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”
That is the kind of stuff out of which God makes soul-winners.
Do you ask, how can a man get such a spirit of courageous obedience? I answer by dying—dying to your selfish interests, dying to the love of praise, the fear of censure, the hope of reward in this world, and by a daredevil faith in the reward that God will give in the world to come; by a steadfast looking unto and following of Jesus, and a constant comparison of time with eternity. I read the other day that it was only dead men who were living preachers.
The obedience must be glad. The command is, “Serve the Lord with gladness.”
“I delight to do thy will, O God,” wrote the Psalmist. There was no grudging about his obedience; it was his joy. It is a love service God wants, and that is always a joy service. “My meat and My drink is to do the will of Him that sent Me,” said Jesus.
Paul declares, “If I do this thing willingly, I have a reward.” It is a glad love service God calls us to, and once we are wholly His and the Comforter abides in us, we shall not find it irksome to obey, and by obedience we shall both save ourselves and others to whom the Lord may send us.
