Personal Defects

"Oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God; O our God, what shall we say after this?" Ezra 9:6, 10


Ezra wrote this after the leaders of Israel told him of the people's sins of intermarrying and cultural mixing. I read this verse in a book I am reading on ministers and their ministry. Can you tell by the scripture and the context of "ministry" how this author may be using this verse?
In his text, the author claims we often couch falsehood within truth. Specifically, he is talking about soul-winning. The truth IS only God saves individuals. Only the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and leads to repentance. However, so many of "us" claim to be "doing the Lord's work" and never seeing fruit. This sometimes is the case. The author's claim, and what I am offering up as food for thought is: We are all too often so ready to accept no fruit, so we can "rest" in the
idea "well, I tried."

I quote: "We can thus be satisfied to use the means without obtaining the end, and speak of it as though we were submitting to the Lord's disposal (use), we use truth to hide a falsehood.. so it is with ministers (read "any Christian"): when we can rest satisfied with using the means for saving souls without seeing them really saved, or we ourselves being broken-hearted by it, and at the same time quietly talk of leaving the event to God's disposal, we make use of a truth to cover and excuse a falsehood; for our ability to leave the matter thus is not, as we imagine, the result of heart-submission to God, but of heart indifference to the salvation of the souls we deal with. No, truly, if the heart is really set on such an end, it must gain that end or break in losing it." (emphasis added)

What do you think? What does it genuinely say if we continually share our faith and see not fruit, and are not affected by it? The point he is expounding upon is if we have truly committed our ways to the Lord, and sought His power, if we have cried out for lost souls, there will be fruit. Hence, the falsehood we cover ... He continues:

"He that saved our souls has taught us to weep over the unsaved. Lord let that mind be in us that was in Thee! ...We can see thousands perish around us, and our sleep never be disturbed; no vision of their awful doom ever scaring us...(their condition) may well send us daily to our knees; for the loss of even one soul is terrible beyond conception. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered the heart of man, what a soul inn hell must suffer forever."

Time in the prayer closet avails much. Time in the world avails Ezra chapter 9.