Let every sincere Christian who has a connection with our schools, be determined to be a faithful servant in the cause of Christ, and help every student to be faithful, pure, and holy in life. Let everyone who loves God seek to win those who have not yet confessed Christ. Every day they may exert a silent, prayerful influence, and co-operate with Jesus Christ, the missionary-in-chief to our world. Let every soul—man, woman, and youth—grow in excellence of character and devotion, in purity and holiness, and live with an eye single to the glory of God, that the enemies of our faith may not triumph. Let there be such a binding together in the bonds of our holy faith, that our united influence may be wholly on the Lord’s side, and may work for the transformation of those with whom we associate. Let it be made manifest that you have a living connection with God, and are ambitious for the Master’s glory, seeking to cultivate in yourselves every grace of character by which you may honor Him who gave His life for you. May the love of Christ exercise a constraining power to draw others into the path cast up for the ransomed of the Lord to walk in. When the students in our schools shall learn to like God’s will, they will find it comparatively easy to do it.
If students see defects of character in others, let them be thankful that they have discerned these defects, and therefore may be put on their guard against them. You will, no doubt, see persons who are not learning the meekness and lowliness of Christ, but who love display, and are vain, frivolous, and worldly. The only remedy for such is to behold Jesus, and by studying His character they will come to despise everything that is vain and frivolous, weak and mean. The character of Christ is full of forbearance, patience, goodness, mercy, and unexampled love. By beholding such a character, they will rise above the littleness of that which has fashioned and molded them, and made them unholy and unlovely. They will say, “I will not sit with vain persons, neither will I go with dissemblers.” They will realize that “he that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”—The Review and Herald, January 16, 1894.
Further Reflection: What does it mean for me to be ambitious for the Master’s glory? JNN 94
The husbandman who “putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come,” can be no other than Christ. It is He who at the last great day will reap the harvest of the earth. But the sower of the seed represents those who labor in Christ's stead. The seed is said to “spring and grow up, he knoweth not how,” and this is not true of the Son of God. Christ does not sleep over His charge, but watches it day and night. He is not ignorant of how the seed grows. COL 62
“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”—Luke 19:10. NKJV