Wherever there is a man who has not felt the warm side of the story of Jesus’ dying there is a deep.  Wherever a group of such can be found is a deep increased in depth by the number in the group.  Wherever the great crowds are gathered together to whom no word at all has come, neither by personal touch nor printed page nor any other wise, there is the deepest deep.  With a deep glow in His eyes as He speaks the word, and the tenderness and softness of deep emotion, and the earnestness of one who has Himself been in the deep Jesus says anew to us to-day, “out into the deep.”

We are to be ambitious in service.  Jesus was ambitious.  He reached out for all, those nearest, those farthest.  He talked of all nations, of a world.  His follower must have a long reach to keep up.  That word ambition has been much abused.  It has been used much in connection with selfish self-seeking, until that meaning has become almost its whole meaning in the thinking of many people.  But with the purpose dominant in Jesus we can properly use it in its old literal meaning.  Originally it simply meant going around, being used in the sense of going out among people soliciting their favor or their votes.

It has the fine vitality of that word “go” in it.  That for which a man is ambitious decides the quality of the word.  A pure, holy purpose makes the intense reaching for it pure and holy too.  An intense reaching out to the farthest reach of the Master’s word, that finds expression in the dominant spirit of the life, in the service, in the giving, the sacrificing, the praying—­this is the true ambition.

Paul uses three times a word that has the force of our word ambition.[15] The American Revision uses ambition in the margin for it.  In advising the group of followers in Thessalonica he says, “Study to be quiet.”  The practical force of the phrase there is this:  be ambitious to be unambitious in the world’s abused meaning of ambitious.  In writing the second time to the friends at Corinth where his motives had been much criticised he said, “I make it my aim (or ambition) to be well-pleasing unto Him.”

And later, in writing to the Christians at Rome, whom he had never seen, he said that he had made it his aim or had been ambitious to preach the Gospel where nobody had yet gone.  The literal meaning of the word he uses is something like this, striving from a love of honor.  And we may find a fine meaning in that which was doubtless used otherwise.

It was a matter of honor with Paul to do as he was doing.  And he would have the honor of having fully carried out his Master’s wish.  He coveted earnestly the honor of being always pleasing to his Master both in life and in the sort and reach of his service.  Here are Paul’s three ambitions:  to be wholly free of the fires of worldly ambitions; to be well-pleasing to Jesus, his Lord; to reach out beyond, where nobody had yet gone with the story of Jesus’ dying and living again.