God by his Spirit magnifies and multiplies the value of our efforts. He clothes them with power, and amplifies our efforts, and we believe that with all our hearts. My feeble witness, faltering words, nervously said, can be made powerful to the salvation of one, then another, then two, then four other souls, and a great wave of blessing may come through the years. We depend upon the Spirit of God, and he makes our service fit and worthy and powerful.
Why do we preach? Why do we witness? Because God uses his people, uses human instruments. We are nothing like good enough at this work, to convince sinners, to capture the hearts of the people, to cause them to swerve from the path of sin and to come into the kingdom of righteousness. We have not the words and the ability and the power but God’s will is to use us. Now, regeneration comes first. God by the power of the Spirit mysteriously regenerates a person and plants spiritual life, so that the mind is opened and the will is inclined to listen, where it wasn’t before. There is created in the unsaved person a new inclination, an openness, because spiritual life has already begun. But it is the will of God that through our ministry – our words, our literature, our persuasions, our appeals, one to one and in public from the pulpit – individuals, will be consciously persuaded and their minds changed, and they will come under conviction of sin. It is true that God frequently saves people to whom nobody speaks. Somehow they simply take up his word and the Holy Spirit works and there seems to be no human agency, human instrumentality. God saying to us, ‘I don’t need you. I can do it directly,’ although those who are saved only through the reading of the Bible have very often, it turns out, had some kind of witness prior to that, even if they rejected it.