GUARD YOUR BLESSINGS

And Laban said unto him, I pray thee if I have found favour in thine eyes, tarry: for I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake. Genesis 30:27

Laban requested the longer stay of Jacob because he felt sure that the Divine blessings had been brought by, him into his home. It was a selfish, low motive for desiring the postponement of his departure; and Laban was destined, alas! to be terribly undeceived. He would wake up one day, to find that during his sojourn with him, and under the cloak of religion, Jacob had been ruthlessly plundering his property. It was a shameful betrayal of trust on Jacob’s part; and it conveys a searching warning to those who, because of their religious professions, are trusted by their relatives or others:-

With their property. – Always do the best possible for your employer or friend, who has entrusted his interests to you, acting toward him as the servant and steward of God. Bear in mind that God has bidden you undertake the office for Himself, and accepts your fidelity as rendered to Him: He will recompense.

With their friendship. – Be very careful here. God puts us into one another’s lives, that we may be the medium through which His love and tenderness may enter them; but there is such danger of our monopolizing for ourselves the place He would fill. Sometimes we almost unconsciously deteriorate rather than elevate our friends by the intrusion of our own personality.

With their Christian instruction and training. – Ministers of God’s holy gospel must especially guard against the tendency to make name, fame, money, out of a position which they should occupy only as God’s stewards. There is such subtleness in the temptation to attract men to ourselves, instead of attaching them to Christ.

In creating friendship you must be careful to guard your property or lose it to that friend. I speak of an experience trusting someone in the name of God that stole the scared contents from my collection of writings. But God has given me a double portion of what was stolen. I am stronger and wiser.