April 16

Influencing our neighbors

“Let everyone of us please his neighbour for his good to edification” (Rom. 15:2).
“For from you sounded out the word of the Lord . . . your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing” (1 Thess. 1:8).

We do not realize the importance of the unconscious part of our life ministry. It goes on continually. In every greeting we give to another on the street, in every moment’s conversation, in every letter we write, in every contact with other lives, there is a subtle influence that goes from us that often reaches further and leaves a deeper impression than the things themselves that we are doing at the time. It is not so much what we do in this world as what we are, that tells in spiritual results and impressions.
—J. R. Miller.

We scatter seeds with careless hand,
And dream we ne’er shall see them more;
But for a thousand years
Their fruit appears,
In weeds that mar the land,
Or healthful store.

The deeds we do, the words we say—
Into still air they seem to fleet,
We count them ever past;
But they shall last—
In the dread Judgment they
And we shall meet.
—John Keble.

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not.
—Thomas Chalmers.

If only ten of us were to apply ourselves diligently to good things, the ten would become twenty, the twenty fifty, the fifty a hundred, the hundred a thousand, and the thousand would influence the whole town.
—Chrysostom.

George Fox, the leader of the Quakers, once said that every Quaker ought to light up the country for ten miles around. What is your influence?

Read full article...