GOD NEEDS YOU!
THE NAME, Stradivari, is synonymous with rare and treasured violins. His instruments, which are now over two hundred years old, are almost worth their weight in gold-they are the treasured possessions of the masters.
In George Eliot's poem, Stradivarius, the old violin maker says:
"If my hand slacked,
I should rob God-since He is fullest good,
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins
-Without Antonio."
I believe one of the most awesome facts of life is that God needs me-He needs you!
Stop and think about this a moment. We readily recognize and affirm our need of God, but, all too often, we fail to realize that God needs us.
"Others may do a greater work,
But you have your part to do;
And no one in all God's heritage
Can do it so well as you."
God has many conditional or contingent purposes for your life but you are the deciding factor. These are purposes in which God proposes to do certain things and accomplish certain results through your cooperation-you are the deciding factor. If you cooperate, the thing will be done; if not, it will not be done. There are some things God will do apart from us, but there are also many things that He cannot accomplish without the cooperation of you and me. We hold the key that will either unlock or bar up His purposes.
In the midst of life's complexities, it is well to remind ourselves that God places in our hands tremendous power. "All things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23). By believing-by cooperating with God, we can modify many adverse conditions. Never was God more able to meet and master every adverse condition than today. Whether He will so act may well depend on what we think, believe, pray and do. Many times we wait for God to do what He waits for us to do.
We weary of famines and floods, pestilence and poverty, conflict and war, all of which shall pass into history forever. How many might have been adverted, how many lives might have been saved or could have been rescued if we had not forgot the path to prayer and the force of faith? Do we forget that when Moses prayed, Israel was saved when Samuel prayed, the Philistines fled in defeat...when Jonah prayed, a million souls were spared. It is up to us to turn the tide; man remains the deciding factor.
When God predicts judgment or impending disaster, it is possible that we may avert it. Unless we act, judgment will surely fall; unless we set up counter laws that will rush out to meet overwhelming evils, disaster will be the result....
Someone asks, 'If God predicts or gives His word, will not that word come to pass in face of all men may do?' Not necessarily so... nothing is more harmful than the failure to distinguish between the eternal decrees of God and His conditional purposes, which we may further, or if need be prevent."
Yes, God needs you to be forged as a strong link in the great chain that binds His purposes to the whole world. If you are willing to cooperate, He will reveal to you your part in His great program.
Equally important, however, is the vital truth that God needs you to fulfill His purposes in your own small world-in your own immediate sphere of influence. God needs you to translate through your life and actions His exhaustless love. This is a very practical thing. Actually, there is only one of you in all the universe, in all the centuries, and God is counting on you for certain acts of love and understanding and witness, which no one else in all time can do. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40).
In Edwin Markham's poem, The Shoes of Happiness, Conrad the Cobbler dreams that the Master will be coming as his Guest. So vivid was the dream that Conrad woke early in the morning and swept and cleaned the shop until it shone. He went and bought food and planned that when the Master came he would wash His feet, and kiss His hands where the cruel nails had been, and then they would dine together. He sat waiting with a fast beating heart, and when he heard the door open, he got up eagerly to greet his Guest; but it was just a beggar. Conrad gave him a pair of shoes and sent him on his way. Presently an old woman came, bent with years, and a heavy burden of faggots on her back; he made her sit down and rest and gave her some food. Conrad waited all day, and finally, late in the afternoon a child came in, crying bitterly. She was lost. He dried her tears and took her back to her mother. But the Master never came, and Conrad sobbed in his little shop with a heavy heart:
"Then soft in the silence a Voice he heard
Lift up your heart, for I've kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door;
Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was the beggar with the bruised feet;
I was the woman ye gave to eat;
I was the homeless child in the street."
Marvel of marvels! God needs me! God needs you! He needs us to be His partners. No person is too small for God's attention-He needs you. He stoops from His Almightiness to ask our aid. Man is God's method of reaching our world and the whole world with the glorious truth that the risen Christ is eager to assume possession of men's hearts and lives. He needs us to be living sermons in a lost world that sees and knows Him not.
And Gideon was nothing,
Was nothing in the fray,
But just a suit of working clothes
The Spirit wore that day.
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