“Brother, are you serving God? Do you live to win souls? Is it your grand object to be the instrument in God’s hand of accomplishing His purposes of grace to the fallen sons of men?
Do you know that God has put you where you are, and called you to do the work to which your life is dedicated? Then go on in God’s name, for, as surely as He called you to His work, you may be sure that to you also He says, as indeed to all His servants, ‘I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.’
But I hear some of you say, ‘We are not engaged in work of such a kind that we could precisely call it work for God.’
Well, brethren, but are you engaged in a work which you endeavour to perform to God’s glory? Is your ordinary and common trade one which is lawful—one concerning which you have no doubt as to its honest propriety; and in carrying it on do you follow right principles only?
Do you endeavour to glorify God in the shop? Do you make the bells on the horses holiness to the Lord? It would not be possible for all of us to be preachers, for where would be the hearers?
Many a man would be very much out place if he were to leave his ordinary calling, and devote himself to what is so unscripturally called ‘the ministry.’
The fact is, the truest religious life is that in which a man follows the ordinary calling of life in the spirit of a Christian.
Now, are you so doing? If so, you are as much ministering before God in measuring out yards of calico, or weighing pounds of tea, as Joshua was in slaying Hivites, and Jebusites, and Hittites.
You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, and training them up in God’s fear, and minding the house, and making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.
And you may take this promise for yourself, for the path of duty is the path where this promise is to be enjoyed. ‘I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.'”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “Strengthening Medicine for God’s Servants” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (vol. 21; London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1875), 52–53. This sermon on Joshua 1:5 was preached in 1875.
