A Problem of Relationship (1951)
Message from Urbana 51by Wilber Sutherland
As I was thinking of coming down to this convention, thinking of the momentous days in which we live, the pressure of circumstances around us and the kind of oasis in the desert of modern life which we are creating at this convention, my mind was turned back some thousands of years to a very momentous night in the ancient land of Egypt. It may not seem immediately relevant to you, but I thought of the event that took place in Egypt on the night that the children of Israel were leaving.
You will remember the story, how the children of Israel had spent long years in this dark land of Egypt under one of the most despotic rules of all history. First uneasy friends, they soon became slaves. Months passed into years until all memory of former freedom had almost been lost. And then a leader - Moses - arose, who promised them liberty in the name of God, promised them a new land and a new life. Startling events took place in their little lives and their hopes alternately rose and fell, rose and fell.
Then on this last night, this last night, events shaped up with even greater momentum than ever before, and they stepped forth into the unknown. Ahead of them lay a future which contained they knew not what. All they knew was that God had said "Go!" and that forces greater than they could control, including Pharaoh himself, were pushing them out with almost explosive force. If any people ever felt the pressure of the times it was the children of Israel that night.
And yet that very night the Lord God saw fit to tell-them to take time - to eat, to prepare, to worship, and to institute a feast of remembrance, that that night might never be forgotten. And so the Israelites that night prepared the Passover, slew the lamb, and you remember put the blood upon the door posts, and then gathered together in the houses and held a solemn feast with their minds on the past and their eyes to the future. They stood with their loins girded, with shoes on their feet, and with a staff in their hands.
Somehow Exodus 12:11 gives to me something of the spirit with which we should meet in these four days here at Urbana. They ate that meal, conscious indeed of the pressures around them but nevertheless deliberately taking a moment of retreat; and yet again not careless, not slothful, but ready, with their staff in their hand, with shoes on their feet, and with their loins girded. It is a striking picture.
Today we are gathered, 1600 strong, from across this continent and indeed from across the world. Around us are many pressures. Around us are many forces which we cannot stay or halt. Yet God has given us an opportunity - indeed, we believe, has commanded us to take time out to gather together in this way - to pause and remember, to look ahead, to think and pray and worship, and to wait orders. And I trust that at this convention, in these four days, there will be both notes. The note of extreme urgency and the note of calm, quiet readiness which somehow are depicted in those words describing those ancient Israelites as they stood there eating the meal on that last night, with shoes on their feet, with their loins girded, and with their staff in their hand.
The convention is a real privilege. It is the privilege of withdrawal from the pressures of life - and we should be grateful indeed for it. And yet, even so, we must not be so removed from the pressures of life as to lack that sense or urgency, for the hour is late. And if we have withdrawn from the world, it is rather to face the world the better. It is to gain perspective that we have come here; not alone our perspective - no, it is to gain God’s perspective.
We don't want to be bound simply by the hours and minutes of this convention. We want to get something of the scope and sweep of eternity, from time past to time to come. Indeed, unless we get ourselves, our thinking, our sharing, our praying, and our seeking after God during this week set in the context of the eternity of God's work, of the whole sweep of history, and of God in history, we will fail to come to grips with the essential core of God's purpose for us, which is both in history and in eternity. Yes, there must be both urgency and at the same time retreat, perspective, poise and readiness.
This convention is a small picture of life as it always will be for us. You are praying that God might show whether or not you should be a missionary in some far land. The problem that you will face if He sends you there is an even more intensified form of what you face here - hours, minutes, routine, ordinary things. If we are to achieve anything in these four days we must be very clear as to why we're here. This is an old story and one known by you all, and yet it must be repeated and we must all come to face it personally.
Unless we are crystal clear as to why we are here, what we're seeking, we may go away empty. Why are you here? There are many good reasons I know. What is the heart reason? What is the core, essential reason? Why are you here? Or should I ask why has God brought you here? Is this merely the accident of circumstance, the whim of your fancy, or are you borne in on the floodtide Of God's purposes? Do you believe that you are? Do you believe that here we find the tide caught at the flood, as Shakespeare said, which will lead on to the certainty and power of God's purposes in your life? Or are you going to drift, uncertain, until the end comes, and all your life is spent in shallows and in misery?
What is your purpose? Have you formalized it, not only in your own mind, but before God? Does it correspond with God's purposes for you? For instance, you who believe that God is definitely calling you to the foreign field, to some distant land overseas for Him, what is this convention going to mean to you? What is your purpose in coming to it? Do you know the particular field yet? Do you understand that there is more than a vision of a specific field that you need, or even the assurance that God wants you overseas?
I have already mentioned that we must think in terms of the whole sweep of God's purposes for mankind, the whole reason why God stepped out of eternity into time, why Jesus Christ was born, why He spent a life of suffering, such as we have heard, why He died, why He stands a risen one today - pleading, speaking, praying concerning us here and now. Is your vision large enough?
You know God's hand upon you. Do you know God's place in terms of His total work? I believe that one of the secrets of failure in Christian work, in Inter-Varsity, in our own country, and overseas as I have seen it, has been this - that we have kept as it were blinkers on our eyes. We have only seen our own narrow, little vineyard. We have been truly called to God’s work, and yet we have not seen outside of our backyard. But we must. It is God's work, not ours, and His work is one around the world.
We must get one vision, global, eternal in its scope and our place in it. We must be, as Hebrews 13 puts it, in bonds with them that are in bonds. We're gathered at this convention. We are a privileged people. There are other lands where there is not this privilege, where stoning, slaying, suffering, torture of mind and body is the rule of the day, for Christians and non-Christians alike.
Is there any sense of unity with them? I think that we should pray that God will give us unity at this convention with the whole work of God around the world; that things spoken on this platform, even if they do not refer to the field of your choice, of God's guidance for you or for me, will not be idle words, but will move us to pray, will touch our hearts, will open our eyes, will bind us together.
God knows that we need one church today in the sense of oneness before God in our work - a unity of fellowship in the common task of preaching Jesus Christ crucified. We cannot walk alone.
We walk with God, therefore we must go together. We must go together at this convention, even as the Children of Israel moved forward that fateful night in a unity of redemption and of divine purpose.
Some of you don’t know where you're going; don't even know if God is calling you to the foreign field. Perhaps some are not even certain that God has any place for you at all, and you're despondent. You've been looking and searching for His will, and you have not yet found it. For you there must be singleness of purpose. Every session must be faced, every interview must be considered, prayed through, every book read, every conversation made, every hour spent, with this one purpose - to determine God's place for you.
Singleness of heart is essential for real accomplishment in the Christian life. Paul said that he feared lest Satan should beguile the Corinthian church with his subtlety from the simplicity of heart which is toward Christ, that singleness of purpose, that identifying of all things with the one aim. We must come with unity of purpose to every session and every hour if we are sincere in seeking God's mind.
Some of you know that God wants you to stay at home. That is, so far as His will has been clearly shown to you. He has a role for you at home. It is not our purpose here; it is not even our prayer that 100% of those who are gathered in this auditorium should end up in some country not their own. It is our desire that each one of us shall be where God would have us -- God's man in God's place doing God's work. We desperately need this day men and women who stand in this land with a vision that reaches far beyond this land and our church is grievously sick in terms of real missionary vision. God's purpose for you at this convention, indeed His immediate purpose for all of us, may be just this missionary role of God's total work begun here at home.
We need a praying, serving, giving church. We have a church that gives but carelessly, we have a church that serves but sporadically, we have a church that prays but unbelievingly. If you think I am extreme you search your own life. I know mine. We must stand together in God's purpose. If God puts us to stay at home we have responsibility for every one at this convention who goes overseas. And yet we cannot suffice our interest with just a general concern for God's work.
We must particularize. Even if God is calling you to stay at home I believe it should be your prayer during this convention that God will lay certain fields, missions, areas, people, upon your heart so that as you stand at home it will be with a very definite hand overseas, that as you have an immediate, direct and particular privilege of sharing overseas so you can pray and act for the whole of God's work.
That is one reason indeed why we are asking you next Sunday morning to share as students with students overseas. Some of us here are from overseas, from other lands, and we know how much it has meant to us to have Christian fellowship here and we certainly will appreciate taking back to our land something of a share of what we have had here. But all of us as students should come with sympathetic and burdened hearts to share with those students who are in less privileged conditions than we are.
But I must move on. Suppose God's work in you is the uncertain thing rather than God's place for you. Suppose God's work in you is the uncertain thing. I really believe that for most of us the issue of this convention will turn on this point. We talk much; we spend many anxious hours asking how we may find God's will. We get panicky about it and yet you know that is not really the issue. As a matter of fact if we spend hours and we cry and pray and search for God's will and then we say, "I can’t find it," essentially what we may be doing is accusing God of either impotence or cynicism, certainly a refusal to show Himself, because after all the onus is on Him to show His will.
You see, I think that almost all of us face this question of guidance in terms of our relationship to the problem when essentially it should be in terms of our relationship to Jesus Christ. The whole question of knowing God’s will in this convention involves principally not an area, not a call, but a walk, a life.
The primary question is not your relationship to a problem but your relationship to Jesus Christ. In Psalm 25 verses 9 and 10 the psalmist says, “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way. All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
The meek will He guide in the way. We think guidance is a matter of the mind. It isn't. It is a matter of the spirit. We think guidance is a matter of some pressure of circumstances or some other such way of finding out what God is after. It is first of all a question of obedience.
Where are you in relationship to God as you face this convention? You see the problem is essentially the Lord's concern. The onus is upon Him to show you what must be done. He has promised He will show it and He will! It is not for us to be panicky about that. When God can find a man who is prepared and obedient He will always guide. There is no problem. There is no question.
The answer is always given if there is a surrendered heart and I want to take this time at this point in the convention, to say that inasmuch as you progress on through this day without facing the issue of your place before God, of your obedience to Jesus Christ; of the extent to which there is purity of heart and soul, of motive and of character; of the extent to which sin is faced and set aside; of the extent to which you have known God's will and obeyed it; inasmuch, I say, as thus far in this convention you have not faced these things and you intend to go on not facing them just to that degree will you be wasting your time because the issue of the convention in all probability is just this.
I repeat: the question of guidance is essentially simple. It is "will you” not "what is it." Are you troubled about God's will? Now honestly, I’m just talking to you as one who is young like yourself. May I suggest in all sincerity that if there is no peace of mind in your heart as you are seeking God's will, it probably reflects the fact that there is a divided allegiance and it is at that point that you must begin your investigation?
Where obedience is there is peace. How sincere are you in seeking to know God's place for you, or are you pretending? Are you saying, I will do this and that only if … if … Or are you really determined to find and do God's will whatever may be involved? This is the prior question and in terms of it I just want briefly to mention three areas of our life together in this convention, and I want to stress them.
First of all, our relationships with each other.
We are essentially and first of all a community. We are a company of God's people, those who have come to know Jesus Christ. Ours is a tremendous privilege to have fellowship in this matter with those of a similar age, facing similar problems, seeking for a similar quest: God's will in terms of a whole life's vocation. Now how are we going to live with one another? I suggest that we earnestly consider that Christian fellowship does not consist in the superficialities of ordinary friendship.
Christian fellowship is essentially fellowship in the purposes of God and in the experience of God and it is centered in and grows out of God's Word and a life of prayer. If this convention is going to be a spiritual fellowship it will be because we talk oft concerning the things of God, share concerning the things of the Bible, pray together, speak on a spiritual level. We don't do that much. In none of our groups - at least such as I have seen - do we really share together as Christians on a spiritual level.
Our conversation is essentially no different from those who have never claimed to have come into contact-with the Most High God. May I beg of you earnestly to bend discipline of mind and heart that in this convention our conversation should be on a spiritual level.
That will be a hard discipline and yet if that discipline is not won here or soon it will never be won at all as life will have been spent and you will have been like the majority of Christians knowing Christ and yet never going on, never really growing, never really amounting to much.
Avoid cliques, but if you have a spiritual friend here to whom you can unburden your heart, who will take a spiritual interest in you, with whom you can take time apart to kneel together and search out God's mind and pray; will you buttonhole him shortly and say, "Look, could you take time for some prayer with me? I have some things on my mind -- you know me fairly well. I'm burdened about this and I want to know God's mind. Will you have a prayer covenant with me? Could we spend some time together in prayer?"
If a life of prayer is not begun in this convention we might as well close up shop right now. And, yet, let's face it. Almost none of us as young Christians know very much about praying. All the more reason we must begin. After each address, are we just going to go on to the next one and then perhaps at the end of the day begin to say, “Now what was it that was said? I know I was impressed and it meant something at the time."
Or will you take the time, sacrifice the time during the day to secure some of these things, to step aside in quiet?
I want to stress that last. I am very concerned that there be a spirit of seeking after aloneness in this convention. One of the pressures of this convention will be the multitude of things happening. One of the weaknesses of our Christian life today - I am talking about many weaknesses am I not? But these are the things we must face as we seek God's will for us - one of the many weaknesses of our Christian life today is that we are victims of our modern civilization. We are always with people, always chattering.
There is something basically wrong in our Christian life if there isn't a hunger to get alone with God. Have you ever spent time - I don’t mean ten minutes, I mean time, hours - before God? You won't have that kind of opportunity in this convention but we will have time and it has got to be grasped after and taken hold of as a precious thing and you must use it.
It is only alone before God that sin is really faced and I am sure that sin will inevitably be an issue in this convention, personal sin. It is only alone before God that dedications are truly made and eternally fixed and it is only really alone before God that worship is begun and if we are Christians together we must worship. It is our privilege. It is only as we are alone before God that we really hear His voice.
Many things will be spoken which may be God's voice to us. It is only as you come alone before God and these things become personalized and prayed over that God's voice becomes sure and clear as we open His Word and search whether these things be so. "To the law and to the testament" - that should be the challenge to each of us, testing everything said as to whether it be God's voice to us or no. We need to be alone to face these decisions. And so it is going to be a question of time. It always has been.
That Passover night there was tremendous pressure on the Children of Israel, there was a sense or urgency in the hour, and yet ... yet of quiet possessing of the time. We must come to that. Ours is an undisciplined age is it not? We throw time away as if we were millionaires, and yet we are not.
All we have is now. We are all equally rich and equally poor in this. The first lesson of the mission field for many of us I am sure is going to be just this: the question of time. So much to be done; what to choose? Can I have the discipline now to make time and redeem it in these evil days?
At the close of this convention we will be privileged to have a communion service together--the breaking of bread, the sharing together in the remembrance feast which Christ set for us, (very similar to that Passover feast of old) in which we will remember the Lamb slain for us and the day of deliverance dawned and we will also remember that it is our high privilege to bring that message of redemption to all the world in our day and generation.
But if we are to come to that communion service to remember that if we are to come there with the shoes on our feet, the staff in our hand, our loins girded, it will be because right now at the close of this hour as you are launched on the convention proper you begin to make use -- earnest, sober use -- of every minute and every hour. What will the hours bring? It depends on what you do with the hours. God give us earnestness and a singleness of heart for His Name's sake.
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