For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building. 1 Corinthians 3:9.
Man cannot be towed to heaven; he cannot go as a passive passenger. He must himself use the oars, and work as a laborer together with God.64Letter 135, 1897.
If you think you can lay down the oars, and still make your way upstream, you are mistaken. It is only by earnest effort, by using the oars with all your might, that you can stem the current. How many there are as weak as water, when they have a never-failing Source of strength! Heaven is ready to impart to us, that we may be mighty in God, and attain the full stature of men and women in Christ Jesus. But who of you in the past year have been making progress in the way of holiness? ... Who have been enabled to gain one precious attainment after another, until envy, pride, malice, jealousy, and every evil stain have been swept away, and only the graces of the Spirit remain? ...
God will help us if we take hold of the help He has provided. “Let him take hold of my strength,” He says, “that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me.” Isaiah 27:5. This is a blessed promise. Many times when I have been discouraged and almost in despair, I have come to the Lord with this promise.... And as I have laid hold of the strength of God, I have found a peace which passeth understanding.65Manuscript 1, 1869.
There are two grand forces at work in the salvation of the human soul. It requires the cooperation of man with the divine agencies—divine influences, and a strong, living, working faith. It is in this way only that the human agent can become a laborer together with God. The Lord does not sanction in any one of us a blind, stupid credulity. He does not dishonor the human understanding, but, far from this, He calls for the human will to be brought into connection with the divine will. He calls for the ingenuity of the human mind, the tact, the skill, to be strenuously exercised in searching out the truth as it is in Jesus.... Ye are labourers together with God.66Letter 109, 1893.
From Our High Calling - Page 310
Our High Calling