The daily life of a Christian worker often determines whether he is qualified for the Lord's work. Some young people manifest qualities that give you the confident expectation that they will develop into useful servants of Christ. From the very beginning, they give others the impression that they are good seeds and that they will blossom and bring forth fruit. There are others who are quite confident of themselves and who consider themselves quite highly, but before long, they fall by the way. In addition to being useless, they also bring dishonor to the Lord's name. They chose a way that is too broad and too wide. Still others are not very conspicuous at the beginning. However, they prove their worth before the Lord in later years. You may ask how we can account for these wide differences. Let me answer frankly that there are certain fundamental features in the constitution and character of every person which account for his usefulness and without which no one can be of any use in the service of the Lord. A young man may hold great promise in many areas, but if fundamental features are lacking, he cannot work for the Lord, even though his desire to serve the Lord is genuine and even though he has prepared himself for it. He can never carry out a proper work for the Lord. We have never met anyone who cannot control his body, yet who can be a good worker of the Lord. I do not know what these ones make of themselves in other professions, but I have never seen a person who is unable to control and rule over his body prove to be a useful servant of the Lord, nor have I seen a man who does not have a mind to suffer who can serve the Lord. I have never met a person who fails to listen to others who is good at serving. All servants of the Lord have to have certain basic character traits. In other words, they must possess such qualifications; they must receive mercy from the Lord to possess these qualities before they can serve the Lord in a proper way. Serving the Lord is not simple. A breaking-down and building-up process is necessary for the outer man. If you are wrong, loose, and undisciplined in many things, you are not qualified to do the Lord's work. Many are not qualified to do the Lord's work because of flaws in their character and personality, not because of a lack of technique, knowledge, or doctrine. This frustration has delayed the Lord's work in many instances. We have to learn to listen to the brothers, to humble ourselves before the Lord, to seek after Him, and to deal with Him in many aspects. We should never despise the training of our character. If our character and disposition do not go through some severe constituting work of the Spirit, we cannot expect much result from our work. None of the basic training in our character can be overlooked. If we are constituted in our character, we can work for the Lord. Without such a character, we cannot work for Him. Let us spend time before Him to deal with these character issues one by one.
In this chapter we come to another character issue—diligence.