Pick Up Your Tools

I.                    Recognition of Stagnation

A.                Going Nowhere

B.                 Willing to Change

C.                 Not Going Alone

II.                 Put Forth the Effort to Grow

Dr. Simpson was writing on our responsibility in our Christian growth, telling of the parable of the servants given talents, when he said, “The man determined to ‘make every effort’ to add to his faith.  The other simply tried to keep what he had.  He did not to increase it.  Are we making ‘every effort’ to make the most of God’s divine resources, of His ‘very great and precious promises,’ of ‘divine nature’ within us?”  A. B. Simpson, A Larger Christian Life, p. 145

A.                The Prophets were willing to Work

B.                 Doing something about your problems

III.               Act to Complete Your Task

A.                The solution is found when you call upon God

B.                 The Key: “Take it up for yourself.”

While it is true that all the resources are divinely provided, this does not justify a spirit of passive negligence on our part.  In fact, it summons us all the more to diligence and earnestness in pressing forward in our spiritual career.  A. B. Simpson, A Larger Christian Life, p. 143