Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Lifes Big Issues | Page 9

lost your arm!" The boy's eyes snapped as he answered: "Lost! No, don't say that; I gave it to France!"
Each one of you fellows has a tremendous capacity for being loyal to some thing, some principle, or somebody. It is a costly part of your make-up, because it will cause you to make sacrifice. What are you choosing as the object of your loyalty?
Fellows, I want to offer you King Jesus as the One upon whom you can spend your loyalty to the limit. There is none like Him. He is the chief among ten thousand. When He gives you a task He gives you at the same time the power to do it. When He sends you to men, He opens the hearts of those to whom you are sent. You can undertake anything for King Jesus without fear, no matter how difficult or how impossible the task may seem.
Why, fellows, think of those two disciples going after that colt for Jesus their King to ride upon! He sent them for it. The beast belonged to some one else, yet they were to untie it and bring it. If the owner objected, all they were to say was: "The Lord hath need of him." That would settle it. They brought it as directed. That was faith, and that was loyalty.
To-day King Jesus wants messengers--not to send out for asses, but into the haunts of sin for lost men and women; and into the social, commercial, and industrial world to present His claims. Some, hearing the call, are answering, "But how do I know I will succeed in that sort of business? Will I be contented in such work? Will it pay? Will it keep me in a comfortable living? Will men come when I tell them?" Listen, fellows, King Jesus says: "All power is given unto me--Go!--and lo, I am with you alway!" That is sufficient, it is the King's own word for it; and here is the place where you can exercise your priceless loyalty to the limit, and never know a moment's regret. The King Himself goes with you.
The loyal servants of King Jesus never have to root for a losing game; victory is assured from the beginning.
_Read Mark 11:1-11._

X
A GOOD SPORT
Say, fellows, I overheard a remark the other day as I passed a bunch of boys down on the corner. One of the boys was saying, "Oh, he's a good sport, all right," and I wondered just what that boy thought it took to make a good sport. About that time one of the boys whom I knew pulled out of the crowd and coming my way overtook me, so I asked him who was the "good sport" the fellows were talking about.
"Why," he said, "it was Jim Love; when he was in the two-mile cross-country foot race the other day, with a good chance of getting ahead of Tom Locke, who won it, Jim stopped long enough to help a guy across a footlog with a sack of potatoes or something--and even then came in just a few yards behind Tom. He would have won, but for that stop; but he said the old man looked as if he was about to fall off the footlog. Tom saw it, too, but he waded the creek and got a better lead on Jim."
It did me good to think of those fellows classing Jim up as "a good sport," after I knew what had happened. They had the right idea. I believe our Lord would have called Jim a good sport, too, if He had been telling the boys of to-day about it, because the Christ spirit in a fellow is what makes him a "good sport" in the highest sense. Once when a proud Pharisee was trying to trap our Lord with a "catch question," Jesus answered him with a story very much like that which made the boys call Jim Love a good sport.
The Pharisee asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" and Jesus told him about the Good Samaritan. A man was travelling from Jerusalem down the rough mountain road to Jericho, and was attacked by bandits, beaten, robbed, and left lying beside the road half dead. A priest came along, but he was in a hurry; he had important religious duties awaiting him, and besides, that fellow looked as if he was in bad and it would take a lot of time and trouble to "undertake" him, so Mr. Priest just hummed a little tune to himself, looked at the sky and passed on.
Then came a Levite. He got down off his donkey and stepped over and looked at the poor fellow. Yes, he was breathing, but so near dead he probably would not last long, so why worry? So passed on the Levite.