LAWTON CHURCH OF GOD, LAWTON OKLAHOMA

Home   About Us   Holiness Library   Bible Prophecy   Listen to Sermons  History of the Holiness Movement   Early English Bibles   Bible Studies   Links

CHAPTER 10

OPPORTUNITY

EVERY life affords opportunities for building up noble character. We are sent into this world to build up character that will be blessed and useful in that great future for which we are being trained. There is a niche which only we can fill, a crown which only we can wear, music which only we can waken, service which only we can render. God knows what these are, and is giving us opportunities to prepare for them.

Four things come not back—the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

Heaven gives us enough when it gives us opportunity. Remember you are responsible for opportunities as well as for talents and for time. Improve them as one that must give an account. If you think your opportunities are not good enough, you had better improve them. Make hay while the sun shines. As a general rule, those who have no opportunities despise small ones; and those who despise small opportunities never get large ones.

Accident does very little toward the production of any great results in life, though some times what is called a “happy hit” may be made by a bold venture. The old and common highway of steady industry and application is the only safe road to travel. It is not usually accident that helps a man in the world, but purpose and persistent industry. These make a man sharp to discern opportunities and turn them to account. To the feeble, the sluggish, and the purposeless, the happiest opportunities avail nothing. They pass them by seeing no meaning in them. If great opportunities were to come to most of us, we could make nothing of them. They would pass by us unnoticed or unimproved. They would go from us to those who had more nerve, or grit, or spiritual power than we.

You can not just because you will, speak a foreign language, dash off a brilliant air upon the piano, or talk easily on the motive of one of Browning’s poems. All these demand long and arduous study.

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good onto all men” (Galatians 6:10).