 Page 1
INTRO"One of the most inspiring and influential books we have ever read." -- Dale Evans and Roy Rogers "IS YOUR LIFE ALL YOU WANT IT TO BE? Hannah Whitall Smith--Quaker, rebel, realist--faced life as she found it, and she found it good. She took her Bible promises literally, tested them, and found them true as tested steel. She stepped out of conjecture into certainty, and the shadows disappeared. Here she reveals the secret--how to make unhappiness and uncertainty give way to serenity and ocnfidence in every day of your life." -- from the Spire edition.
 By Hannah Whitall Smith As Published by Christian Witness Co.
|
I knew a lady who had entered into this life of
faith with a great outpouring of the Spirit, and a wonderful flood of light and
joy. She supposed, of course, this was a preparation for some great service,
and expected to be put forth immediately into the Lord's harvest field. Instead
of this, almost at once her husband lost all his money, and she was shut up in
her own house, to attend to all sorts of domestic duties, with no time or
strength left for any Gospel work at all. She accepted the discipline, and
yielded herself up as heartily to sweep, and dust, and bake, and sew, as she
would have done to preach, or pray or write for the Lord. And the result was
that through this very training He made her into a vessel "meet for the
Master's use, and prepared unto every good work."
Another lady, who had entered this life of faith
under similar circumstances of wondrous blessing, and who also expected to be
sent out to do some great work, was shut up with two peevish invalid nieces, to
nurse, and humor, and amuse them all day long. Unlike the first lady, this one
did not accept the training, but chafed and fretted, and finally rebelled, lost
all her blessing, and went back into a state of sad coldness and misery. She
had understood her part of trusting to begin with, but not understanding the
divine process of accomplishing that for which she had trusted, she took
herself out of the hands of the Heavenly Potter, and the vessel was marred on
the wheel.
|
"I am only tiny sparrow,
a bird of low degree. My life is of little value, but the dear Lord cares for me.
I have no barn nor storehouse;
I neither sow nor reap.
"I know there are many sparrows;
all over the world they are found.
"Though small, we are never forgotten;
though weak, we are never afraid.
"I fly through the thickest forest,
I light on many a spray.
And I fold my wing at twilight,
wherever I happen to be;
I am only a little sparrow,
a bird of low degree; |
|
Chapter 4
HOW TO ENTER IN
Having tried to settle the question as to the scripturalness of the experience
of this life of full trust, and having also shown a little of what it is; the
next point is as to how it is to be reached and realized.
And first, I would say that this blessed life
must not be looked upon in any sense as an attainment but as an obtainment. We
cannot earn it, we cannot climb up to it, we cannot win it; we can do nothing
but ask for it and receive it. It is the gift of God in Christ Jesus. And where
a thing is a gift, the only course left for the receiver is to take it and
thank the giver. We never say of a gift, "See to what I have attained," and
boast of our skill and wisdom in having attained it; but we say, "See what has
been given me," and boast of the love and wealth and generosity of the giver.
And everything in our salvation is a gift. From beginning to end, God is the
giver and we are the receivers; and it is not to those who do great things, but
to those who "receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness,"
that the richest promises are made.
In order, therefore, to enter into a realized
experience of this interior life, the soul must be in a receptive attitude,
fully recognizing the fact that it is to be God's gift in Christ Jesus, and
that it cannot be gained by any efforts or works of our own. This will simplify
the matter exceedingly; and the only thing left to be considered then will be
to discover upon whom God bestows this gift, and how they are to receive it.
And to this I would answer in short, that He bestows it only upon the fully
consecrated soul, and that it is to be received by faith.
Consecration is the first thing. Not in any legal
sense, not in order to purchase or deserve the blessing, but to remove the
difficulties out of the way and make it possible for God to bestow it. In order
for a lump of clay to be made into a beautiful vessel, it must be entirely
abandoned to the potter, and must lie passive in his hands. And in order for a
soul to be made into a vessel unto God's honor,
"sanctified and meet for the
Master's use, and prepared unto every good work,"
it must be entirely abandoned
to Him, and must lie passive in His hands. This is manifest at the first
glance.
I was once trying to explain to a physician, who
had charge of a large hospital, what consecration meant, and its necessity, but
he seemed unable to understand. At last I said to him, "Suppose, in going your
rounds among your patients, you should meet with one man who entreated you
earnestly to take his case under your especial care in order to cure him, but
who should at the same time refuse to tell you all the symptoms, or to take all
your prescribed remedies; and should say to you, `I am quite willing to follow
your directions as to certain things, because they commend themselves to my
mind as good, but in other matters I prefer judging for myself and following my
own directions.' What would you do in such a case?" I asked. "Do!" he replied
with indignation, -- "do! I would soon leave such a man as that to his own
care. For of course," he added, "I could do nothing for him, unless he would
put his whole case into my hands without any reserves, and would obey my
directions implicitly." "It is necessary then," I said, "for doctors to be
obeyed, if they are to have any chance to cure their patients?" "Implicitly
obeyed!" was his emphatic reply. "And that is consecration," I continued. "God
must have the whole case put into His hands without any reserves, and His
directions must be implicitly followed." "I see it," he exclaimed, -- "I see
it! And I will do it. God shall have His own way with me from henceforth."
Perhaps to some minds the word "abandonment"
might express this idea better. But whatever word we use, we mean an entire
surrender of the whole being to God; spirit, soul, and body placed under His
absolute control, for Him to do with us just what He pleases. We mean that the
language of our soul, under all circumstances, and in view of every act, is to
be, "Thy will be done." We mean the giving up of all liberty of choice. We mean
a life of inevitable obedience.
To a soul ignorant of God, this may look hard.
But to those who know Him, it is the happiest and most restful of lives. He is
our Father, and He loves us, and He knows just what is best, and therefore, of
course, His will is the very most blessed thing that can come to us under all
circumstances. I do not understand how it is that Satan has succeeded in
blinding the eyes of the Church to this fact. But it really would seem as if
God's own children were more afraid of His will than of anything else in life;
His lovely, lovable will, which only means loving-kindnesses and tender
mercies, and blessings unspeakable to their souls. I wish I could only show to
every one the unfathomable sweetness of the will of God. Heaven is a place of
infinite bliss because His will is perfectly done there, and our lives share in
this bliss just in proportion as His will is perfectly done in them. He loves
us, loves us, and the will of love is always blessing for its loved one. Some
of us know what it is to love, and we know that could we only have our way, our
beloved ones would be overwhelmed with blessings. All that is good, and sweet,
and lovely in life would be poured out upon them from our lavish hands, had we
but the power to carry out our will for them. And if this is the way of love
with us, how much more must it be so with our God, who is love itself. Could we
but for one moment get a glimpse into the mighty depths of His love, our hearts
would spring out to meet His will, and embrace it as our richest treasure; and
we would abandon ourselves to it with an enthusiasm of gratitude and joy, that
such a wondrous privilege could be ours.
A great many Christians actually seem to think
that all their Father in heaven wants is a chance to make them miserable, and
to take away all their blessings, and they imagine, poor souls, that if they
hold on to things in their own will, they can hinder Him from doing this. I am
ashamed to write the words, and yet we must face a fact which is making
wretched hundreds of lives.
A Christian lady who had this feeling, was once
expressing to a friend how impossible she found it to say, "Thy will be done,"
and how afraid she should be to do it. She was the mother of one only little
boy, who was the heir to a great fortune, and the idol of her heart. After she
had stated her difficulties fully, her friend said, "Suppose your little
Charley should come running to you tomorrow and say, `Mother, I have made up my
mind to let you have your own way with me from this time forward. I am always
going to obey you, and I want you to do just whatever you think best with me. I
know you love me, and I am going to trust myself to your love.' How would you
feel towards him? Would you say to yourself, `Ah, now I shall have a chance to
make Charley miserable. I will take away all his pleasures, and fill his life
with every hard and disagreeable thing I can find. I will compel him to do just
the things that are the most difficult for him to do, and will give him all
sorts of impossible commands." "Oh, no, no, no!" exclaimed the indignant
mother. "You know I would not. You know I would hug him to my heart and cover
him with kisses, and would hasten to fill his life with all that was sweetest
and best." "And are you more tender and more loving than God?" asked her
friend. "Ah, no," was the reply, "I see my mistake, and I will not be afraid of
saying `Thy will be done,' to my Heavenly Father, any more than I would want my
Charley to be afraid of saying it to me."
Better and sweeter than health, or friends, or
money, or fame, or ease, or prosperity, is the adorable will of our God. It
gilds the darkest hours with a divine halo, and sheds brightest sunshine on the
gloomiest paths. He always reigns who has made it his kingdom; and nothing can
go amiss to him. Surely, then, it is nothing but a glorious privilege that is
opening before you when I tell you that the first step you must take in order
to enter into the
life hid with Christ
in God, in God, is that of entire consecration.
I cannot have you look at it as a hard and stern demand. You must do it gladly,
thankfully, enthusiastically. You must go in on what I call the privilege side
of consecration; and I can assure you, from a blessed experience, that you will
find it the happiest place you have ever entered yet.
Faith is the next thing. Faith is an absolutely
necessary element in the reception of any gift; for let our friends give a
thing to us ever so fully, it is not really ours until we believe it has been
given and claim it as our own. Above all, this is true in gifts which are
purely mental or spiritual. Love may be lavished upon us by another without
stint or measure, but until we believe that we are loved, it never really
becomes ours.
I suppose most Christians understand this
principle in reference to the matter of their forgiveness. They know that the
forgiveness of sins through Jesus might have been preached to them forever, but
it would never have become theirs consciously until they believed this
preaching, and claimed the forgiveness as their own. But when it comes to
living the Christian life, they lose sight of this principle, and think that,
having been saved by faith, they are now to live by works and efforts; and
instead of continuing to receive, they are now to begin to do. This makes our
declaration that the
life hid with Christ
in God
is to be entered by faith,
seem perfectly unintelligible to them. And yet it is plainly declared, that "as
we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so we are to walk in Him." We received
Him by faith, and by faith alone; therefore we are to walk in Him by faith, and
by faith alone. And the faith by which we enter into this hidden life is just
the same as the faith by which we were translated out of the kingdom of
darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, only it lays hold of a different
thing. Then we believed that Jesus was our Saviour from the guilt of sin, and
according to our faith it was unto us. Now we must believe that He is our
Saviour from the power of sin, and according to our faith it shall be unto us.
Then we trusted Him for our justification, and it became ours; now we must
trust Him for our sanctification, and it shall become ours also.
Then
we took Him as a Saviour in the future from the penalties of our sins;
now
we must take Him as a Saviour in the present
from the bondage of our sins.
Then
He was our Redeemer,
now
He is to be our Life.
Then
He lifted us out of the pit,
now
He is to seat us in heavenly places with Himself.
[Eph._2:5-6]
I mean all this of course experimentally and
practically. Theologically and judicially I know that every believer has
everything the minute he is converted. But experimentally nothing is his until
by faith he claims it. "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread
upon, that have I given unto you." God
"hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,"
but until we set the foot of faith
upon them they do not practically become ours. "According to our faith," is
always the limit and the rule.
But this faith of which I am speaking must be a
present faith. No faith that is exercised in the future tense amounts to
anything. A man may believe forever that his sins will be forgiven at some
future time, and he will never find peace. He has to come to the now belief,
and say by faith, "My sins are now forgiven," before he can live the new life.
And, similarly, no faith which looks for a future deliverance from the power of
sin, will ever lead a soul into the life we are describing. The enemy delights
in this future faith, for he knows it is powerless to accomplish any practical
results. But he trembles and flees when the soul of the believer dares to claim
a present deliverance, and to reckon itself now to be free from his power.
To sum up, then: in order to enter into
this blessed interior
life of rest
and triumph, you have two steps to take: first,
entire abandonment; and second, absolute faith. No matter what may be the
complications of your peculiar experience, no matter what your difficulties or
your surroundings or your associations, these two steps, definitely taken and
unwaveringly persevered in, will certainly bring you out sooner or later into
the green pastures and still waters of this higher Christian life. You may be
sure of this. And if you will let every other consideration go, and simply
devote your attention to these two points, and be very clear and definite about
them, your progress will be rapid and your soul will reach its desired haven
far sooner than now you can think possible.
Shall I repeat the steps, that there may be no
mistake? You are a child of God, and long to please Him. You love your precious
Saviour, and are sick and weary of the sin that grieves Him. You long to be
delivered from its power. Everything you have hitherto tried has failed to
deliver you, and now in your despair you are asking if it can indeed be, as
these happy people say, that the Lord is able and willing to deliver you.
Surely you know in your very soul that He is; that to save you out of the hand
of all your enemies is in fact just the very thing He came to do. Then trust
Him. Commit your case to Him in an absolute abandonment, and believe that He
undertakes it; and at once, knowing what He is and what He has said, claim that
He does even now fully save. Just as you believed at first that He delivered
you from the guilt of sin because He said so, believe now that He delivers you
from the power of sin because He says so. Let your faith now lay hold of a new
power in Christ. You have trusted Him as your dying Saviour, now trust Him as
your living Saviour. Just as much as He came to deliver you from future
punishment, did He also come to deliver you from present bondage. Just as truly
as He came to bear your sins for you, has He come to live His life in you. You
are as utterly powerless in the one case as in the other. You could as easily
have got yourself rid of your own sins, as you could now accomplish for
yourself practical righteousness. Christ, and Christ only, must do both for
you, and your part in both cases is simply to give the thing to Him to do, and
then believe that He does it.
A lady, now very eminent in this life of trust,
when she was seeking in great darkness and perplexity to enter in, said to the
friend who was trying to help her, "You all say, `Abandon yourself, and trust,
abandon yourself, and trust,' but I do not know how. I wish you would just do
it out loud, so that I may see how you do it."
Shall I do it out loud for you?
"Lord Jesus, I believe that Thou art able and
willing to deliver me from all the care, and unrest and bondage of my Christian
life. I believe thou didst die to set me free, not only in the future, but now
and here. I believe thou art stronger than Satan, and that thou canst keep me,
even me, in my extreme of weakness, from falling into his snares or yielding
obedience to his commands. And, Lord, I am going to trust thee to keep me. I
have tried keeping myself, and have failed, and failed most grievously. I am
absolutely helpless; so now I will trust thee. I will give myself to thee; I
keep back no reserves. Body, soul, and spirit, I present myself to thee, a
worthless lump of clay, to be made into anything thy love and thy wisdom shall
choose. And now, I am thine. I believe thou dost accept that which I present to
thee; I believe that this poor, weak, foolish heart has been taken possession
of by thee, and thou hast even at this very moment begun to work in me
to will
and to do of Thy good pleasure.
I trust thee utterly, and I trust thee now!"
Are you afraid to take this step? Does it seem
too sudden, too much like a leap in the dark? Do you not know that the steps of
faith always "fall on the seeming void, but find the rock beneath"? A man,
having to descend a well by a rope, found, to his horror, when he was a great
way down, that it was too short. He had reached the end, and yet was, he
estimated, about thirty feet from the bottom of the well. He knew not what to
do. He had not the strength or skill to climb up the rope, and to let go was to
be dashed to pieces. His arms began to fail, and at last he decided that as he
could not hold on much longer, he might as well let go and meet his fate at
once. He resigned himself to destruction, and loosened his grasp. He fell! To
the bottom of the well it was -- just three inches!
If ever your feet are to touch the "rock
beneath," you must let go of every holding-place and drop into God; for there
is no other way. And to do it now may save you months and even years of strain
and weariness.
In all the old castles of England there used to
be a place called the keep. It was always the strongest and best protected
place in the castle, and in it were hidden all who were weak and helpless and
unable to defend themselves in times of danger. Had you been a timid, helpless
woman in such a castle during a time of siege, would it have seemed to you a
leap in the dark to have hidden yourself there? Would you have been afraid to
do it? And shall we be afraid to hide ourselves in the keeping power of our
Divine Keeper, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, and who has promised to
preserve our going out and our coming in, from this time forth and even forever
more?
Chapter 5
DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING CONSECRATION
It is very important that Christians should not be ignorant of the devices of the enemy; for he stands ready to oppose every onward step of the soul's progress. And especially is he busy when he sees a believer awakened to a hunger and thirst after righteousness, and seeking to reach out to apprehend all the fulness that is in the Lord Jesus Christ for him.One of the first difficulties he throws in the way of such a one is concerning consecration. The seeker after holiness is told that he must consecrate himself; and he endeavors to do so. But at once he meets with a difficulty. He has done it, as he thinks, and yet does not feel differently from before; nothing seems changed, as he has been led to expect it would be, and he is completely baffled, and asks the question almost despairingly, "How am I to know when I am consecrated?"
The one grand temptation which has met such a soul at this juncture is the temptation which never fails to assert itself on every possible occasion, and generally with marked success, and that is in reference to feeling. The soul cannot believe it is consecrated until it feels that it is; and because it does not feel that God has taken it in hand, it cannot believe that He has. As usual, it puts feeling first and faith second. Now, God's invariable rule is faith first and feeling second, in everything; and it is striving against the inevitable when we seek to make it different.
The way to meet this temptation, then, in reference to consecration, is simply to take God's side in the matter, and to put faith before feeling. Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, according to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to God, either in your heart or life. If He shows you anything, give it to the Lord immediately, and say in reference to it, "Thy will be done." If He shows you nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and must conclude that you have given Him all. Then you must believe that He takes you. You positively must not wait to feel either that you have given yourself or that He has taken you. You must simply believe it, and reckon it to be the case.
If you were to give an estate to a friend, you would have to give it, and he would have to receive it by faith. An estate is not a thing that can be picked up and handed over to another; the gift of it and its reception are altogether a mental transaction and therefore one of faith. Now, if you should give an estate one day to a friend, and then should go away and wonder whether you really had given it, and whether he had actually taken it and considered it his own, and should feel it necessary to go the next day and renew the gift; and if on the third day you should still feel a similar uncertainty about it, and should again go and renew the gift, and on the fourth day go through a like process, and so on, day after day for months and years, what would your friend think, and what at last would be the condition of your own mind in reference to it? Your friend certainly would begin to doubt whether you ever had intended to give it to him at all; and you yourself would be in such hopeless perplexity about it , that you would not know whether the estate was yours, or his, or whose it was.
Now, is not this very much the way in which you have been acting towards God in this matter of consecration? You have given yourself to Him over and over daily, perhaps for months, but you have invariably come away from your seasons of consecration wondering whether you really have given yourself after all, and whether He has taken you; and because you have not felt any differently, you have concluded at last, after many painful tossings, that the thing has not been done. Do you know, dear believer, that this sort of perplexity will last forever, unless you cut it short by faith? You must come to the point of reckoning the matter to be an accomplished and settled thing, and leaving it there, before you can possibly expect any change of feeling what ever.
The very law of offerings to the Lord settles this as a primary fact, that everything which is given to Him becomes by that very act something holy, set apart from all other things, and cannot without sacrilege be put to any other uses. "Notwithstanding, no devoted thing that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord." Having once given it to the Lord, the devoted thing henceforth was reckoned by all Israel as being the Lord's, and no one dared to stretch forth a hand to retake it. The giver might have made his offering very grudgingly and half-heartedly, but having made it, the matter was taken out of his hands altogether, and the devoted thing by God's own law became "most holy unto the Lord."
It was not the intention of the giver that made it holy, but the holiness of the receiver. "The altar sanctifies the gift." And an offering once laid upon the altar, from that moment belonged to the Lord. I can imagine an offerer who had deposited a gift, beginning to search his heart as to his sincerity and honesty in doing it, and coming back to the priest to say that he was afraid after all he had not given it right, or had not been perfectly sincere in giving it. I feel sure that the priest would have silenced him at once with saying, "As to how you gave your offering, or what were your motives in giving it, I do not know. The facts are that you did give it, and that it is the Lord's, for every devoted thing is most holy unto Him. It is too late to recall the transaction now." And not only the priest but all Israel would have been aghast at the man who, having once given his offering, should have reached out his hand to take it back. And yet, day after day, earnest-hearted Christians, who would have shuddered at such an act of sacrilege on the part of a Jew, are guilty in their own experience of a similar act, by giving themselves to the Lord in solemn consecration, and then through unbelief taking back that which they have given.
Because God is not visibly present to the eye, it is difficult to feel that a transaction with Him is real. I suppose if, when we made our acts of consecration, we could actually see Him present with us, we should feel it to be a very real thing, and would realize that we had given our word to Him and could not dare to take it back, no matter how much we might wish to do so. Such a transaction would have to us the binding power that a spoken promise to an earthly friend always has to a man of honor. And what we need is to see that God's presence is a certain fact always, and that every act of our soul is done right before Him, and that a word spoken in prayer is as really spoken to Him, as if our eyes could see Him and our hands could touch Him. Then we shall cease to have such vague conceptions of our relations with Him, and shall feel the binding force of every word we say in His presence.
I know some will say here, "Ah, yes; but if He would only speak to me, and say that He took me when I gave myself to Him, I would have no trouble then in believing it." No, of course you would not; but He does not generally say this until the soul has first proved its loyalty by believing what He has already said. It is he that believeth who has the witness, not he that doubteth. And by His very command to us to present ourselves to Him a living sacrifice, He has pledged Himself to receive us. I cannot conceive of an honorable man asking another to give him a thing which, after all, he was doubtful about taking; still less can I conceive of a loving parent acting so towards a darling child. "My son, give me thy heart," is a sure warrant for knowing that the moment the heart is given, it will be taken by the One who has commanded the gift. We may, nay we must, feel the utmost confidence then that when we surrender ourselves to the Lord, according to His own command, He does then and there receive us, and from that moment we are His. A real transaction has taken place, which cannot be violated without dishonor on our part, and which we know will not be violated by Him.
In Deut. 26:17-19, we see God's way of working under these circumstances: --
"Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in His ways and to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and to hearken unto His voice; and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people, as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldst keep all His commandments; . . . and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord, as He hath spoken."
When we avouch the Lord to be our God, and that we will walk in His ways and keep His commandments, He avouches us to be His, and that we shall keep all His commandments. And from that moment He takes possession of us. This has always been His principle of working, and it continues to be so. "Every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord." This seems to me so plain as scarcely to admit of a question.
But if the soul still feels in doubt or difficulty, let me refer you to a New Testament declaration which approaches the subject from a different side, but which settles it, I think, quite as definitely. It is in 1 John 5:14-15, and reads: "And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him." Is it according to His will that you should be entirely consecrated to Him? There can be, of course, but one answer to this, for He has commanded it. Is it not also according to His will that He should work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure? This question also can have but one answer, for He has declared it to be His purpose. You know, then, that these things are according to His will, therefore on God's own word you are obliged to know that He hears you; and knowing this much, you are compelled to go further and know that you have the petitions that you have desired of Him. That you have, I say, not will have, or may have, but have now in actual possession. It is thus that we "obtain promises" by faith. It is thus that we have "access by faith" into the grace that is given us in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is thus, and thus only, that we come to know our hearts are "purified by faith," and are enabled to live by faith, to stand by faith, to walk by faith.
I desire to make this subject so plain and practical that no one need have any further difficulty about it, and therefore I will repeat again just what must be the acts of your soul in order to bring you out of this difficulty about consecration.
I suppose that you have trusted the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and know something of what it is to belong to the family of God, and to be made an heir of God through faith in Christ. And now you feel springing up in your soul the longing to be conformed to the image of your Lord. In order for this, you know there must be an entire surrender of yourself to Him, that He may work in you all the good pleasure of His will; and you have tried over and over to do it, but hitherto without any apparent success.
At this point it is that I desire to help you. What you must do now is to come once more to Him in a surrender of your whole self to His will, as complete as you know how to make it. You must ask Him to reveal to you by His Spirit any hidden rebellion; and if He reveals nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and that the surrender is complete. This must, then, be considered a settled matter. You have abandoned yourself to the Lord, and from henceforth you do not in any sense belong to yourself; you must never even so much as listen to a suggestion to the contrary. If the temptation comes to wonder whether you really have completely surrendered yourself, meet it with an assertion that you have. Do not even argue the matter. Repel any such idea instantly and with decision. You meant it then, you mean it now, you have really done it. Your emotions may clamor against the surrender, but your will must hold firm. It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose, and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to.
The surrender, then, having been made, never to be questioned or recalled, the next point is to believe that God takes that which you have surrendered, and to reckon that it is His. Not that it will be at some future time, but is now; and that He has begun to work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And here you must rest. There is nothing more for you to do, for you are the Lord's now, absolutely and entirely in His hands, and He has undertaken the whole care and management and forming of you; and will, according to His word, "work in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ." But you must hold steadily here. If you begin to question your surrender, or God's acceptance of it, then your wavering faith will produce a wavering experience, and He cannot work. But while you trust He works, and the result of His working always is to change you into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, by His mighty Spirit.
Do you, then, now at this moment surrender yourself wholly to Him? You answer, Yes. Then, my dear friend, begin at once to reckon that you are His; that He has taken you, and that He is working in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And keep on reckoning this. You will find it a great help to put your reckoning into words, and to say over and over to yourself and to your God, "Lord, I am thine; I do yield myself up to thee entirely, and I believe that thou dost take me. I leave myself with thee. Work in me all the good pleasure of thy will, and I will only lie still in thy hands, and trust thee."
Make this a daily definite act of your will, and many times a day recur to it, as being your continual attitude before Him. Confess it to yourself. Confess it to your God. Confess it to your friends. Avouch the Lord to be your God continually and unwaveringly, and declare your purpose of walking in His ways and keeping His statutes; and you will find in practical experience that He has avouched you to be His peculiar people and that you shall keep all His commandments, and that you will be "an holy people unto the Lord, as He hath spoken."
A few simple rules may be found helpful here. I would advise the use of them in daily times of devotion, making them the definite test and attitude of the soul, until the light shines clearly on this matter.
- Express in definite words your faith in Christ
as your Saviour; and acknowledge definitely that you believe He has reconciled
you to God; according to
2_Cor._5:18-19.
- Definitely acknowledge God as your Father,
and yourself as His redeemed and forgiven child; according to
Gal. [4]
v:_6.
- Definitely surrender yourself to be all the
Lord's, body, soul, and spirit; and to obey Him in everything where His will is
made known; according to
Rom._12:12.
- Believe and continue to believe, against all
seemings, that God takes possession of that which you thus abandon to Him, and
that He will henceforth work in you
to will
and to do of His good pleasure,
unless you consciously frustrate His grace; according to
2_Cor._6:17-18, and
Phil._2:13.
- Pay no attention to your feelings as a test of
your relations with God, but simply attend to the state of your will and of
your faith. And count all these steps you are now taking as settled, though the
enemy may make it seem otherwise.
Heb._10:22-23.
- Never, under any circumstances, give way for
one single moment to doubt or discouragement. Remember, that all discouragement
is from the devil, and refuse to admit it; according to
John_14:1,
27.
- Cultivate the habit of expressing your faith in definite words, and repeat often, "I am all the Lord's and He is working in me now to will and to do of His good pleasure; according to Heb._13:21.
Chapter 6
DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING FAITH
The next step after consecration, in the soul's progress out of the wilderness
of Christian experience, into the land that floweth with milk and honey, is
that of faith. And here, as in the first step, the enemy is very skilful in
making difficulties and interposing obstacles.
The child of God, having had his eyes opened
to see the fulness there is in Jesus for him, and having been made to long to
appropriate that fulness to himself, is met with the assertion on the part of
every teacher to whom he applies, that this fulness is only to be received by
faith. But the subject of faith is involved in such a hopeless mystery in his
mind, that this assertion, instead of throwing light upon the way of entrance,
only seems to make it more difficult and involved than ever.
"Of course it is to be by faith," he says, "for I
know that everything in the Christian life is by faith. But then, that is just
what makes it so hard, for I have no faith, and I do not even know what it is,
nor how to get it." And, baffled at the very outset by this insuperable
difficulty, he is plunged into darkness, and almost despair.
This trouble all arises from the fact that the
subject of faith is very generally misunderstood; for in reality faith is the
plainest and most simple thing in the world, and the most easy of
attainment.
Your idea of faith, I suppose, has been something
like this. You have looked upon it as in some way a sort of thing, either a
religious exercise of soul, or an inward gracious disposition of heart;
something tangible, in fact, which, when you have got, you can look at and
rejoice over, and use as a passport to God's favor, or a coin with which to
purchase His gifts. And you have been praying for faith, expecting all the
while to get something like this, and never having received any such thing, you
are insisting upon it that you have no faith. Now faith, in fact, is not in the
least this sort of thing. It is nothing at all tangible. It is simply believing
God, and, like sight, it is nothing apart from its object. You might as well
shut your eyes and look inside to see whether you have sight, as to look inside
to discover whether you have faith. You see something, and thus know that you
have sight; you believe something, and thus know that you have faith. For, as
sight is only seeing, so faith is only believing. And as the only necessary
thing about seeing is, that you see the thing as it is, so the only necessary
thing about believing is, at you believe the thing as it is. The virtue does
not lie in your believing, but in the thing you believe. If you believe the
truth you are saved; if you believe a lie you are lost. The believing in both
cases is the same; the things believed in are exactly opposite, and it is this
which makes the mighty difference. Your salvation comes, not because your faith
saves you, but because it links you on to the Saviour who saves; and your
believing is really nothing but the link.
I do beg of you to recognize, then, the extreme
simplicity of faith; that it is nothing more nor less than just believing God
when He says He either has done something for us, or will do it; and then
trusting Him to do it. It is so simple that it is hard to explain. If any one
asks me what it means to trust another to do a piece of work for me, I can only
answer that it means letting that other one do it, and feeling it perfectly
unnecessary for me to do it myself. Every one of us has trusted very important
pieces of work to others in this way, and has felt
perfect rest in thus trusting,
because of the confidence we have had in those who have undertaken to
do it. How constantly do mothers trust their most precious infants to the care
of nurses, and feel no shadow of anxiety? How continually we are all of us
trusting our health and our lives, without a thought of fear, to cooks and
coachmen, engine drivers, railway conductors, and all sorts of paid servants,
who have us completely at their mercy, and could plunge us into misery or death
in a moment, if they chose to do so, or even if they failed in the necessary
carefulness? All this we do, and make no fuss about it. Upon the slightest
acquaintance, often, we thus put our trust in people, requiring only the
general knowledge of human nature, and the common rules of human intercourse;
and we never feel as if we were doing anything in the least remarkable.
You have done all this yourself, dear reader, and
are doing it continually. You would not be able to live in this world and go
through the customary routine of life a single day, if you could not trust your
fellow-men. And it never enters into your head to say you cannot.
But yet you do not hesitate to say, continually,
that you cannot trust your God!
I wish you would just now try to imagine yourself
acting in your human relations as you do in your spiritual relations. Suppose
you should begin tomorrow with the notion in your head that you could not trust
anybody, because you had no faith. When you sat down to breakfast you would
say, "I cannot eat anything on this table, for I have no faith, and I cannot
believe the cook has not put poison in the coffee, or that the butcher has not
sent home diseased meat." So you would go starving away. Then when you went out
to your daily avocations, you would say, "I cannot ride in the railway train,
for I have no faith, and therefore I cannot trust the engineer, nor the
conductor, nor the builders of the carriages, nor the managers of the road." So
you would be compelled to walk everywhere, and grow unutterably weary in the
effort, besides being actually unable to reach many of the places you could
have reached in the train. Then, when your friends met you with any statements,
or your business agent with any accounts, you would say, "I am very sorry that
I cannot believe you, but I have no faith, and never can believe anybody." If
you opened a newspaper you would be forced to lay it down again, saying, "I
really cannot believe a word this paper says, for I have no faith; I do not
believe there is any such person as the queen, for I never saw her; nor any
such country as Ireland, for I was never there. And I have no faith, so of
course I cannot believe anything that I have not actually felt and touched
myself. It is a great trial, but I cannot help it, for I have no faith."
Just picture such a day as this, and see how
disastrous it would be to yourself, and what utter folly it would appear to any
one who should watch you through the whole of it. Realize how your friends
would feel insulted, and how your servants would refuse to serve you another
day. And then ask yourself the question, if this want of faith in your
fellow-men would be so dreadful, and such utter folly, what must it be when you
tell God that you have no power to trust Him nor to believe His word; that "it
is a great trial, but you cannot help it, for you have no faith"?
Is it possible that you can trust your fellow-men
and cannot trust your God? That you can receive the "witness of men," and
cannot receive the "witness of God"? That you can believe man's records, and
cannot believe God's record? That you can commit your dearest earthly interests
to your weak, failing fellow-creatures without a fear, and are afraid to commit
your spiritual interests to the blessed Saviour who shed His blood for the very
purpose of saving you, and who is declared to be "able to save you to the
uttermost"?
Surely, surely, dear believer, you, whose very
name of believer implies that you can believe, will never again dare to excuse
yourself on the plea of having no faith. For when you say this, you mean of
course that you have no faith in God, since you are not asked to have faith in
yourself, and you would be in a very wrong condition of soul if you had. Let me
beg of you then, when you think or say these things, always to complete the
sentence and say, "I have no faith in God, I cannot believe God"; and this I am
sure will soon become so dreadful to you, that you will not dare to continue
it.
But you say, I cannot believe without the Holy
Spirit. Very well; will you conclude that your want of faith is because of the
failure of the blessed Spirit to do His work? For if it is, then surely you are
not to blame, and need feel no condemnation; and all exhortations to you to
believe are useless.
But, no! Do you not see that, in taking up this
position, that you have no faith and cannot believe, you are not only "making
God a liar," but you are also manifesting an utter want of confidence in the
Holy Spirit? For He is always ready to help our infirmities. We never have to
wait for Him, He is always waiting for us. And I for my part have such absolute
confidence in the blessed Holy Ghost, and in His being always ready to do his
work, that I dare to say to every one of you, that you can believe now, at this
very moment, and that if you do not, it is not the Spirit's fault, but your
own.
Put your will then over on to the believing side.
Say, "Lord I will believe, I do believe," and continue to say it. Insist upon
believing, in the face of every suggestion of doubt with which you may be
tempted. Out of your very unbelief, throw yourself headlong on to the word and
promises of God, and dare to abandon yourself to the keeping and saving power
of the Lord Jesus. If you have ever trusted a precious interest in the hands of
any earthly friend, I conjure you, trust yourself now and all your spiritual
interests in the hands of your Heavenly Friend, and never, never, NEVER allow
yourself to doubt again.
And remember, there are two things which are more
utterly incompatible than even oil and water, and these two are trust and
worry. Would you call it trust, if you should give something into the hands of
a friend to attend to for you, and then should spend your nights and days in
anxious thought and worry as to whether it would be rightly and successfully
done? And can you call it trust, when you have given the saving and keeping of
your soul into the hands of the Lord, if day after day and night after night
you are spending hours of anxious thought and questionings about the matter?
When a believer really trusts anything, he ceases to worry about that thing
which he has trusted. And when he worries, it is a plain proof that he does not
trust. Tested by this rule how little real trust there is in the Church of
Christ! No wonder our Lord asked the pathetic question, "When the Son of Man
cometh shall he find faith on the earth?" He will find plenty of activity, a
great deal of earnestness, and doubtless many consecrated hearts; but shall he
find faith, the one thing He values more than all the rest? It is a solemn
question, and I would that every Christian heart would ponder it well. But may
the time past of our lives suffice us to have shared in the unbelief of the
world; and let us every one, who know our blessed Lord and His unspeakable
trustworthiness, set to our seal that He is true, by our generous abandonment
of trust in Him.
I remember, very early in my Christian life,
having every tender and loyal impulse within me stirred to its depths by an
appeal I met with in a volume of old sermons to all who loved the Lord Jesus,
that they should show to others how worthy He was of being trusted, by the
steadfastness of their own faith in Him. And I remember my soul cried out with
an eager longing that I might be called to walk in paths so dark, that an utter
abandonment of trust might be my blessed and glorious privilege.
"Ye have not passed this way heretofore," it may
be; but today it is your happy privilege to prove, as never before, your loyal
confidence in the Lord by starting out with Him on a life and walk of faith,
lived moment by moment in absolute and childlike trust in Him.
You have trusted Him in a few things, and He has
not failed you. Trust Him now for everything, and see if He does not do for you
exceeding abundantly above all that you could ever have asked or thought; not
according to your power or capacity, but according to His own mighty power,
that will work in you all
the good pleasure of His most blessed will.
You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with
the management of the universe and all the outward creation, and can your case
be any more complex or difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or
troubled about his management of it. Away with such unworthy doubtings! Take
your stand on the power and trustworthiness of your God, and see how quickly
all difficulties will vanish before a steadfast determination to believe. Trust
in the dark, trust in the light, trust at night, and trust in the morning, and
you will find that the faith, which may begin by a mighty effort, will end
sooner or later by becoming the easy and natural habit of the soul.
All things are possible to God, and "all things
are possible to him that believeth." Faith has, in times past, "subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of
lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, waxed
valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens"; and faith can do
it again. For our Lord Himself says unto us, "If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place,
and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
If you are a child of God at all, you must have
at least as much faith as a grain of mustard seed, and therefore you dare not
say again that you cannot trust because you have no faith. Say rather, "I can
trust my Lord, and I will trust Him, and not all the powers of earth or hell
shall be able to make me doubt my wonderful, glorious, faithful Redeemer!"
In that greatest event of this century, the
emancipation of our slaves, there is a wonderful illustration of the way of
faith. The slaves received their freedom by faith, just as we must receive
ours. The good news was carried to them that the government had proclaimed
their freedom. As a matter of fact they were free the moment the Proclamation
was issued, but as a matter of experience they did not come into actual
possession of their freedom until they had heard the good news and had believed
it. The fact had to come first, but the believing was necessary before the fact
became available, and the feeling would follow last of all. This is the divine
order always, and the order of common-sense as well. I. The fact. II. The
faith. III. The feeling. But man reverses this order and says, I. The feeling.
II. The faith. III. The fact.
Had the slaves followed man's order in regard to
their emancipation, and refused to believe in it until they had first felt it,
they might have remained in slavery a long while. I have heard of one instance
where this was the case. In a little out-of-the-way Southern town a Northern
lady found, about two or three years after the war was over, some slaves who
had not yet taken possession of their freedom. An assertion of hers, that the
North had set them free, aroused the attention of an old colored auntie, who
interrupted her with the eager question, --
"O missus, is we free?""Of course you are," replied the lady. "O missus, is you sure?" urged the woman, with intensest eagerness. "Certainly, I am sure," answered the lady. "Why, is it possible you did not know it?" "Well," said the woman, "we heered tell as how we was free, and we asked master, and he `lowed we wasn't, and so we was afraid to go. And then we heered tell again, and we went to the cunnel, and he `lowed we'd better stay with ole massa. And so we's just been off and on. Sometimes we'd hope we was free, and then again we'd think we wasn't. But now, missus, if you is sure we is free, won't you tell me all about it?" |
Seeing that this was a case of real need, the lady took the pains to explain the whole thing to the poor woman; all about the war, and the Northern army, and Abraham Lincoln, and his Proclamation of Emancipation, and the present freedom.
The poor slave listened with the most intense eagerness. She heard the good news. She believed it. And when the story was ended, she walked out of the room with an air of the utmost independence, saying as she went, -- "I's free! I's ain't agoing to stay with ol massa any longer!"
She had at last received her freedom, and she had received it by faith. The government had declared her to be free long before, but this had not availed her, because she had never yet believed in this declaration. The good news had not profited her, not being "mixed with faith" in the one who heard it. But now she believed, and believing, she dared to reckon herself to be free. And this, not because of any change in herself or her surroundings, not because of any feelings of emotions of her own heart, but because she had confidence in the word of another, who had come to her proclaiming the good news of her freedom.
Need I make the application? In a hundred different messages God has declared to us our freedom, and over and over He urges us to reckon ourselves free. Let your faith then lay hold of His proclamation, and assert it to be true. Declare to yourself, to your friends, and in the secret of your soul to God, that you are free. Refuse to listen for a moment to the lying assertions of your old master, that you are still his slave. Let nothing discourage you, no inward feelings nor outward signs. Hold on to your reckoning in the face of all opposition, and I can promise you, on the authority of our Lord, that according to your faith it shall be unto you.
Of all the worships we can bring our God, none is so sweet to Him as this utter self-abandoning trust, and none brings Him so much glory. Therefore in every dark hour remember that "though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations," it is in order that "the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, and honor, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ."
Chapter 7
DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING THE WILL
When the child of God has, by the way of entire abandonment and absolute trust,
stepped out of himself into Christ, and has begun to know something of the
blessedness of the
life hid with Christ
in God,
there is one form of difficulty
which is very likely to start up in his path. After the first emotions of peace
and rest have somewhat subsided, or if, as is sometimes the case, they have
never seemed to come at all, he begins to feel such an utter unreality in the
things he has been passing through, that he seems to himself like a hypocrite,
when he says or even thinks they are real. It seems to him that his belief does
not go below the surface, that it is a mere lip-belief, and therefore of no
account, and that his surrender is not a surrender of the heart, and therefore
cannot be acceptable to God. He is afraid to say he is altogether the Lord's,
for fear he will be telling an untruth, and yet he cannot bring himself to say
he is not, because he longs for it so intensely. The difficulty is real and
very disheartening.
But there is nothing here which will not be
very easily overcome, when the Christian once thoroughly understands the
principles of the new life, and has learned how to live in it. The common
thought is, that this
life hid with Christ
in God
is to be lived in the
emotions, and consequently all the attention of the soul is directed towards
them, and as they are satisfactory or otherwise,
the soul rests or is troubled.
Now the truth is that this life is not to be lived in the emotions at all, but
in the will, and therefore the varying states of emotion do not in the least
disturb or affect the reality of the life, if only the will is kept steadfastly
abiding in its centre, God's will.
To make this plain, I must enlarge a little.
Fenelon says
somewhere, that "pure religion resides in the will alone." By this
he means that as the will is the governing power in the man's nature, if the
will is set straight, all the rest of the nature must come into harmony. By the
will I do not mean the wish of the man, nor even his purpose, but the choice,
the deciding power, the king, to which all that is in the man must yield
obedience. It is the man, in short, the "Ego," that which we feel to be
ourselves.
It is sometimes thought that the emotions are the
governing power in our nature. But, as a matter of practical experience, I
think we all of us know that there is something within us, behind our emotions,
and behind our wishes, -- an independent self, -- that after all decides
everything and controls everything. Our emotions belong to us, and are suffered
and enjoyed by us, but they are not ourselves; and if God is to take possession
of us, it must be into this central will or personality that He shall enter.
If, then, He is reigning there by the power of His Spirit, all the rest of our
nature must come under His sway; and as the will is, so is the man.
The practical bearing of this truth upon the
difficulty I am considering is very great. For the decisions of our will are
often so directly opposed to the decisions of our emotions, that, if we are in
the habit of considering our emotions as the test, we shall be very apt to feel
like hypocrites in declaring those things to be real which our will alone has
decided. But the moment we see that the will is king, we shall utterly
disregard anything that clamors against it, and shall claim as real its
decisions, let the emotions rebel as they may.
I am aware that this is a difficult subject to
deal with, but it is so exceedingly practical in its bearing upon the life of
faith, that I beg of you, dear reader, not to turn from it until you have
mastered it.
Perhaps an illustration will help you. A young
man of great intelligence, seeking to enter into this new life, was utterly
discouraged at finding himself the slave to an inveterate habit of doubting. To
his emotions nothing seemed true, nothing seemed real; and the more he
struggled the more unreal did it all become. He was told this secret concerning
the will, that if he would only put his will over on to the believing side; if
he would choose to believe; if, in short, he would, in the Ego of his nature,
say, "I will believe! I do believe!" he need not trouble about his emotions,
for they would find themselves compelled, sooner or later, to come into
harmony. "What!" he said," do you mean to tell me that I can choose to believe
in that way, when nothing seems true to me; and will that kind of believing be
real?" "Yes," was the answer, "your part is only this, -- to put your will over
on God's side in this matter of believing; and when you do this, God
immediately takes possession of it, and works in you
to will of His good pleasure,
and you will soon find that He has brought all the rest of your
nature into subjection to Himself." "Well," was the answer, "I can do this. I
cannot control my emotions, but I can control my will, and the new life begins
to look possible to me, if it is only my will that needs to be set straight in
the matter. I can give my will to God, and I do!"
From that moment, disregarding all the pitiful
clamoring of his emotions, which continually accused him of being a wretched
hypocrite, this young man held on steadily to the decision of his will,
answering every accusation with the continued assertion that he chose to
believe, he meant to believe, he did believe; until at the end of a few days he
found himself triumphant, with every emotion and every thought brought into
captivity to the mighty power of the blessed Spirit of God, who had taken
possession of the will thus put into His hands. He had held fast the profession
of his faith without wavering, although it had seemed to him that, as to real
faith itself, he had none to hold fast. At times it had drained all the will
power he possessed to his lips, to say that he believed, so contrary was it to
all the evidence of his senses or of his emotions. But he had caught the idea
that his will was, after all, himself, and that if he kept that on God's side,
he was doing all he could do, and that God alone could change his emotions or
control his being. The result has been one of the grandest Christian lives I
know of, in its marvellous simplicity, directness, and power over sin.
The secret lies just here. That our will, which
is the spring of all our actions, is in our natural state under the control of
self, and self has been working it in us to our utter ruin and misery. Now God
says,
"Yield yourselves up
unto Me, as those that are alive from the dead,
and
I will work in you
to will
and to do of my good pleasure."
And the moment we yield ourselves, He of course takes possession of us,
and does work in us
"that which is
well
pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ,"
giving us
the mind
that was in Christ,
and
transforming
us into His image.
(See
Rom. 12:1, 2.
Let us take another illustration. A lady, who had
entered into this
life hid with Christ,
was confronted by a great prospective
trial. Every emotion she had within her rose up in rebellion against it, and
had she considered her emotions to be her king, she would have been in utter
despair. But she had learned this secret of the will, and knowing that, at the
bottom, she herself did really choose the will of God for her portion, she did
not pay the slightest attention to her emotions, but persisted in meeting every
thought concerning the trial, with the words, repeated over and over, "Thy will
be done! Thy will be done!" asserting in the face of all her rebelling
feelings, that she did submit her will to God's, that she chose to submit, and
that His will should be and was her delight! The result was, that in an
incredibly short space of time every thought was brought into captivity; and
she began to find even her very emotions rejoicing in the will of God.
Again, there was a lady who had a besetting sin,
which in her emotions she dearly loved, but which in her will she hated. Having
believed herself to be necessarily under the control of her emotions, she had
therefore thought she was unable to conquer it, unless her emotions should
first be changed. But she learned this secret concerning the will, and going to
her knees she said, "Lord, Thou seest that with one part of my nature I love
this sin, but in my real central self I hate it. And now I put my will over on
thy side in the matter. I will not do it any more. Do thou deliver me."
Immediately God took possession of the will thus surrendered to Himself, and
began to work in her, so that His will in the matter gained the mastery over
her emotions, and she found herself delivered, not by the power of an outward
commandment, but by the inward power of the Spirit of God working in her that
which was well pleasing in His sight.
And now, dear Christian, let me show you how to
apply this principle to your difficulties. Cease to consider your emotions, for
they are only the servants; and regard simply your will, which is the real king
in your being. Is that given up to God? Is that put into His hands? Does your
will decide to believe? Does your will choose to obey? If this is the case,
then you are in the Lord's hands, and you decide to believe, and you choose to
obey; for your will is yourself. And the thing is done. The transaction with
God is as real, where only your will acts, as when every emotion coincides. It
does not seem as real to you; but in God's sight it is as real. And when you
have got hold of this secret, and have discovered that you need not attend to
your emotions, but simply to the state of your will, all the Scripture
commands,
to yield yourself to God,
to present yourself a living sacrifice to Him,
[Rom._12:1]
to abide in Christ,
[John_15:4-5]
to walk in the light,
[1_John_1:7]
to die to self,
[Luke_9:23]
become possible to you; for you are conscious that, in all these, your will can act, and can
take God's side: whereas, if it had been your emotions that must do it, you
would sink down in despair, knowing them to be utterly uncontrollable.
When, then, this feeling of unreality or
hypocrisy comes, do not be troubled by it. It is only in your emotions, and is
not worth a moment's thought. Only see to it that your will is in God's hands;
that your inward self is abandoned to His working; that your choice, your
decision, is on His side; and there leave it. Your surging emotions, like a
tossing vessel, which, by degrees, yields to the steady pull of the cable,
finding themselves attached to the mighty power of God by the choice of your
will, must inevitably come into captivity, and give in their allegiance to Him;
and you will verify the truth of the saying that, "If any man will do His will,
he shall know of the doctrine."
The will is like a wise mother in a nursery; the
feelings are like a set of clamoring, crying children. The mother decides upon
a certain course of action, which she believes to be right and best. The
children clamor against it, and declare it shall not be. But the mother,
knowing that she is mistress and not they, pursues her course calmly, unmoved
by their clamors, and takes no notice of them except in trying to soothe and
quiet them. The result is that the children are sooner or later compelled to
yield, and fall in with the decision of the mother. Thus order and harmony are
preserved. But if that mother should for a moment let in the thought that the
children were the mistresses instead of herself, confusion would reign
unchecked. Such instances have been known in family life! And in how many souls
at this very moment is there nothing but confusion, simply because the feelings
are allowed to govern, instead of the will!
Remember, then, that the real thing in your
experience is what your will decides, and not the verdict of your emotions; and
that you are far more in danger of hypocrisy and untruth in yielding to the
assertions of your feelings, than in holding fast to the decision of your will.
So that, if your will is on God's side, you are no hypocrite at this moment in
claiming as your own the blessed reality of belonging altogether to Him, even
though your emotions may all declare the contrary.
I am convinced that, throughout the Bible, the
expressions concerning the "heart" do not mean the emotions, that which we now
understand by the word "heart"; but they mean the will, the personality of the
man, the man's own central self; and that the object of God's dealings with man
is, that this "I" may be yielded up to Him, and this central life abandoned to
His entire control. It is not the feelings of the man God wants, but the man
himself.
Have you given Him yourself, dear reader? Have
you abandoned your will to His working? Do you consent to surrender the very
centre of your being into His hands? Then, let the outposts of your nature
clamor as they may, it is your right to say, even now, with the apostle,
"I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son
of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."
[Gal._2:20]
After this chapter had been enclosed to the
printer, the following remarkable practical illustration of its teaching was
presented by Pasteur T. Monod, of Paris. It is the experience of a Presbyterian
minister, which this pasteur had carefully kept for many years.
NEWBURGH, Sept. 26, 1842.
Dear Brother, -- I take a few moments of that time which I have devoted to the Lord, in writing a short epistle to you, His servant. It is sweet to feel we are wholly the Lord's, that He has received us and called us His. This is religion, -- a relinquishment of the principle of self-ownership, and the adoption in full of the abiding sentiment, "I am not my own, I am bought with a price." [1_Cor._6:19-20] Since I last saw you, I have been pressing forward, and yet there has been nothing remarkable in my experience of which I can speak; indeed I do not know that it is best to look for remarkable things; but strive to be holy, as God is holy, pressing right on toward the mark of the prize.
I do not feel myself qualified to instruct you; I can only tell you the way in which I was led. The Lord deals differently with different souls, and we ought not to attempt to copy the experience of others, yet there are certain things which must be attended to by every one who is seeking after a clean heart.
There must be a personal consecration of all to God, a covenant made with God, that we will be wholly and forever His. This I made intellectually without any change in my feeling, with a heart full of hardness and darkness, unbelief and sin and insensibility.
I covenanted to be the Lord's, and laid all upon the altar, a living sacrifice, to the best of my ability. And after I rose from my knees, I was conscious of no change in my feeling. I was painfully conscious that there was no change. But yet I was sure that I did, with all the sincerity and honesty of purpose of which I was capable, make an entire and eternal consecration of myself to God. I did not then consider the work done by any means, but I engaged to abide in a state of entire devotion to God, a living perpetual sacrifice. And now came the effort to do this.
I knew that I must believe that God did accept me, and had come in to dwell in my heart. I was conscious I did not believe this, and yet I desired to do so. I read with much prayer John's First Epistle, and endeavored to assure my heart of God's love to me as an individual. I was sensible that my heart was full of evil. I seemed to have no power to overcome pride, or to repel evil thoughts, which I abhorred. But Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil, and it was clear that the sin in my heart was the work of the devil. I was enabled, therefore, to believe that God was working in me, to will and to do, while I was working out my own salvation with fear and trembling.
I was convinced of unbelief, that it was voluntary and criminal. I clearly saw that unbelief was an awful sin, it made the faithful God a liar. The Lord brought before me my besetting sins which had dominion over me, especially preaching myself instead of Christ, and indulging self-complacent thoughts after preaching. I was enabled to make myself of no reputation, and to seek the honor which cometh from God only. Satan struggled hard to beat me back from the Rock of Ages but thanks to God I finally hit upon the method of living by the moment, and then I found rest.
I trusted in the blood of Jesus already shed, as a sufficient atonement for all my past sins, and the future I committed wholly to the Lord, agreeing to do His will under all circumstances as He should make it known, and I saw that all I had to do was to look to Jesus for a present supply of grace, and to trust Him to cleanse my heart and keep me from sin at the present moment.
I felt shut up to a momentary dependence upon the grace of Christ. I would not permit the adversary to trouble me about the past or future, for I each moment looked for the supply for that moment. I agreed that I would be a child of Abraham, and walk by naked faith in the Word of God, and not by inward feelings and emotions: I would seek to be a Bible Christian. Since that time the Lord has given me a steady victory over sins which before enslaved me. I delight in the Lord, and in His Word. I delight in my work as a minister: my fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. I am a babe in Christ; I know my progress has been small compared with that made by many. My feelings vary, but when I have feelings, I praise God, and I trust in His word; and when I am empty and my feelings are gone, I do the same. I have covenanted to walk by faith and not by feelings.
The Lord, I think, is beginning to revive His work among my people. "Praise the Lord." May the Lord fill you with all His fulness and give you all the mind of Christ. Oh, be faithful! Walk before God and be perfect. Preach the Word. Be instant in season and out of season. The Lord loves you. He works with you. Rest your soul fully upon that promise, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
Your fellow soldier,
WILLIAM HILL
There may be some who will object to this teaching, that it ignores the work of the blessed Holy Spirit. But I must refer such to the introductory chapter of this book, in which I have fully explained myself. I am not writing upon that side of the subject; I am considering man's part in the matter, and not the part of the Spirit. I realize intensely that all a man can do or try to do would be utterly useless, if the Holy Spirit did not work in that man continually. And it is only because I believe in the Spirit as a mighty power, ever present and always ready to do his work, that I can write as I do. But, like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, the operations of the Spirit are beyond our control, and also beyond our comprehension.
The results we know, and the steps on our part which lead to those results, but we know nothing more. And yet, like a workman in a great manufactory, who does not question the commands of his employer, and is not afraid to undertake apparent impossibilities, because he knows there is a mighty unseen power, called steam, behind his machinery, which can accomplish it all, so we dare to urge upon men that they shall simply and courageously set themselves to do that which they are commanded to do, because we know that the mighty Spirit will never fail to supply at each moment the necessary power for that moment's act. And we boldly claim that we who thus write can say from our very hearts, as earnestly and as solemnly as any other Christians, We believe in the Holy Ghost.
Chapter 8
IS GOD IN EVERYTHING?
One of the greatest obstacles to living unwaveringly this life of entire
surrender is the difficulty of seeing God in everything. People say, "I can
easily submit to things which come from God; but I cannot submit to man, and
most of my trials and crosses come through human instrumentality." Or they say,
"It is all well enough to talk of trusting; but when I commit a matter to God,
man is sure to come in and disarrange it all; and while I have no difficulty in
trusting God, I do see serious difficulties in the way of trusting men."
This is no imaginary trouble, but it is of
vital importance, and if it cannot be met, does really make the life of faith
an impossible and visionary theory. For nearly everything in life comes to us
through human instrumentalities, and most of our trials are the result of
somebody's failure, or ignorance, or carelessness, or sin. We know God cannot
be the author of these things, and yet unless He is the agent in the matter,
how can we say to Him about it, "Thy will be done"?
Besides, what good is there in trusting our
affairs to God, if, after all, man is to be allowed to come in and disarrange
them; and how is it possible to live by faith, if human agencies, in whom it
would be wrong and foolish to trust, are to have a predominant influence in
moulding our lives?
Moreover, things in which we can see God's hand
always have a sweetness in them which consoles while it wounds. But the trials
inflicted by man are full of bitterness.
What is needed, then, is to see God in
everything, and to receive everything directly from His hands, with no
intervention of
second causes. And it is just to this that we must be brought,
before we can know
an abiding experience
of entire abandonment and perfect
trust. Our abandonment must be to God, not to man, and our trust must be in
Him, not in any arm of flesh, or we shall fail at the first trial.
The question here confronts us at once, "But is
God in everything, and have we any warrant from the Scripture for receiving
everything from His hands, without regarding the
second causes which may have
been instrumental in bringing it about?" I answer to this, unhesitatingly, Yes.
To the children of God everything comes directly from their Father's hand, no
matter who or what may have been the apparent agents. There are no "second
causes" for them.
The whole teaching of the Bible asserts and
implies this.
"Not a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father." The very
hairs of our head are all numbered.
We are
not to be careful about anything,
because our Father cares for us.
We are
not to avenge ourselves, because our Father has charged Himself with our defence.
We are
not to fear, for the Lord is on our side.
No one can be against us, because He is for us.
We shall not want, for He is our Shepherd.
When we pass through the rivers they shall not
overflow us, and when we walk through the fire we shall not be burned, because
He will be with us. He shuts the mouths of lions, that they cannot hurt us.
"He
delivereth and rescueth."
"He
changeth the times and the seasons; He removeth
kings and setteth up kings."
A man's
heart is in His hand, and,
"as the river of water, He turneth it whithersoever He will."
He
ruleth over all the kingdoms of the heathen;
and in His hand there is power and might, "so that none is able to withstand" Him.
"He
ruleth the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof
arise, He stilleth them."
He
"bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought; He
maketh the devices of the people of none effect."
"Whatsoever the Lord pleaseth,
that does He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places."
"If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice
in a province, marvel not at the matter; for
He that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher
than they."
"Lo, these are a part of His ways;
but how little a portion is heard of Him?
But the thunder of His power who can understand?"
"Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord,
the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is
no searching of His understanding."
And this
"God is our refuge and strength, a very
present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be
removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though
the waters thereof roar and be troubled; though the mountains shake with the
swelling thereof."
"I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisesome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." "Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." [Psa._91:1-11]
To my own mind, these Scriptures, and many others like them, settle forever the question as to the power of second causes in the life of the children of God. They are all under the control of our Father, and nothing can touch us except with His knowledge and by His permission. It may be the sin of man that originates the action, and therefore the thing itself cannot be said to be the will of God but by the time it reaches us, it has become God's will for us, and must be accepted as directly from His hands. No man or company of men, no power in earth or heaven, can touch that soul which is abiding in Christ, without first passing through Him, and receiving the seal of His permission. If God be for us, it matters not who may be against us; nothing can disturb or harm us, except He shall see that it is best for us, and shall stand aside to let it pass.
An earthly parent's care for his helpless child is a feeble illustration of this. If the child is in its father's arms, nothing can touch it without that father's consent, unless he is too weak to prevent it. And even if this should be the case, he suffers the harm first in his own person, before he allows it to reach his child. And if an earthly parent would thus care for his little helpless one, how much more will our Heavenly Father, whose love is infinitely greater, and whose strength and wisdom can never be baffled! I am afraid there are some, even of God's own children, who scarcely think that He is equal to themselves in tenderness, and love, and thoughtful care; and who in their secret thoughts, charge Him with a neglect and indifference of which they would feel themselves incapable. The truth really is, that His care is infinitely superior to any possibilities of human care; and that He who counts the very hairs of our head, and suffers not a sparrow to fall without Him, takes note of the minutest matters that can affect the lives of His children, and regulates them all according to His own sweet will, let their origin be what they may.
The instances of this are numberless. Take Joseph. What could have seemed more apparently on the face of it to be the result of sin, and utterly contrary to the will of God, than his being sold into slavery? And yet Joseph, in speaking of it, said, "As for you, ye thought evil against me: but God meant it unto good." "Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life." [Gen. 50:20"] To the eye of sense it was surely Joseph's wicked brethren who had sent him into Egypt; and yet Joseph, looking at it with the eye of faith, could say, "God sent me." It had been undoubtedly a grievous sin in his brethren, but, by the time it had reached Joseph, it had become God's will for him, and was in truth, though at first it did not look so, the greatest blessing of his whole life. And thus we see how the Lord can make even the wrath of man to praise Him, and how all things, even the sins of others, shall work together for good to them that love Him.
I learned this lesson practically and experimentally long years before I knew the scriptural truth concerning it. I was attending a prayer-meeting held for the promotion of scriptural holiness, when a strange lady rose to speak, and I looked at her, wondering who she could be, little thinking she was to bring a message to my soul which would teach me such a grand lesson. She said she had had great difficulty in living the life of faith, on account of the second causes that seemed to her to control nearly everything that concerned her. Her perplexity became so great, that at last she began to ask God to teach her the truth about it, whether He really was in everything or not. After praying this for a few days, she had what she described as a vision. She thought she was in a perfectly dark place, and that there advanced towards her from a distance a body of light, which gradually surrounded and enveloped her and everything around her. As it approached, a voice seemed to say, "This is the presence of God; this is the presence of God." While surrounded with this presence, all the great and awful things in life seemed to pass before her, -- fighting armies, wicked men, raging beasts, storms and pestilences, sin and suffering of every kind.
She shrank back at first in terror, but she soon saw that the presence of God so surrounded and enveloped each one of these, that not a lion could reach out its paw, nor a bullet fly through the air, except as His presence moved out of the way to permit it. And she saw that, let there be ever so thin a sheet, as it were, of this glorious presence between herself and the most terrible violence, not a hair of her head could be ruffled, nor anything touch her, unless the presence divided to let the evil through. Then all the small and annoying things of life passed before her, and equally she saw that these all were so enveloped in this presence of God that not a cross look, not a harsh word, nor petty trial of any kind, could reach her unless His presence moved out of the way to let them through.
Her difficulty vanished. Her question was answered forever. God was in everything; and to her henceforth there were no second causes. She saw that her life came to her day by day and hour by hour directly from His hand, let the agencies which should seem to control it be what they might. And never again had she found any difficulty in an abiding consent to His will and an unwavering trust in His care.
If we look at the seen things, we shall not be able to understand the secret of this. But the children of God are called to look, "not at the things which are seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." Could we but see with our bodily eyes His unseen forces surrounding us on every side, we would walk through this world in an impregnable fortress, which nothing could ever overthrow or penetrate, for "the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them."
We have a striking illustration of this in the history of Elisha. The king of Syria was warring against Israel, but his evil designs were continually frustrated by the prophet; and at last he sent his army to the prophet's own city for the express purpose of taking him captive. We read, "He sent thither horses and chariots and a great host; and they came by night and compassed the city about." This was the seen thing. And the servant of the prophet, whose eyes had not yet been opened to see the unseen things, was alarmed. And we read, "And when the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold an host compassed the city, both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master, how shall we do?" But his master could see the unseen things, and he replied, "Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." And then he prayed, saying, "Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."
The presence of God is the fortress of His people. Nothing can withstand it. At His presence the wicked perish; the earth trembles; the hills melt like wax; the cities are broken down; "the heavens also dropped, and Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God." [Psa._68:8] And in the secret of this presence He has promised to hide His people from the pride of man, and from the strife of tongues. [Psa._31:20] "My presence shall go with thee," He says, "and I will give thee rest." [Exo._33:14]
I wish it were only possible to make every Christian see this truth as plainly as I see it; for I am convinced it is the only clue to a completely restful life. Nothing else will enable a soul to live only in the present moment, as we are commanded to do, and to take no thought for the morrow. Nothing else will take all the risks and "supposes" out of a Christian's heart, and enable him to say, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Abiding in God's presence, we run no risks; and such a soul can triumphantly say, --
|
"I know not what it is to doubt, My heart is always gay; I run no risks, for, come what will, God always has His way." |
|
I once heard of a colored woman who earned a
precarious living by daily labor, but who was a joyous, triumphant Christian.
"Ah! Nancy," said a gloomy Christian lady to her one day, who almost
disapproved of her constant cheerfulness, and yet envied it, -- "ah! Nancy, it
is all well enough to be happy now; but I should think the thoughts of your
future would sober you. Only suppose, for instance, that you should have a
spell of sickness and be unable to work; or suppose your present employers
should move away, and no one else should give you anything to do; or suppose --
" "Stop!" cried Nancy, "I never supposes. De Lord is my shepherd, and I knows I
shall not want. And, honey," she added to her gloomy friend, "it's all dem
supposes as is makin' you so misable. You'd better give dem all up, and just
trust de Lord."
There is one text that will take all the
"suppose" out of a believer's life, if only it is received and acted out in a
childlike faith; it is in
Heb. 3:5-6:
"Be content, therefore, with such things
as ye have; for He hath said I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee"; so
that we may boldly say, "THE LORD IS MY HELPER, AND I WILL NOT FEAR WHAT MAN
SHALL DO UNTO ME." What if dangers of all sorts shall threaten you from every
side, and the malice or foolishness or ignorance of men shall combine to do you
harm? You may face every possible contingency with these triumphant words, "The
Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me." If the Lord
is your helper, how can you fear what man may do unto you? There is no man in
this world, nor company of men, that can touch you, unless your God, in whom
you trust, shall please to let them. "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:
He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall
neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon
thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night. The
Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord
shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even
for evermore."
Nothing else but this seeing God in everything
will make us loving and patient with those who annoy and trouble us. They will
be to us then only the instruments for accomplishing His tender and wise
purposes towards us, and we shall even find ourselves at last inwardly thanking
them for the blessings they bring us.
Nothing else will completely put an end to all
murmuring or rebelling thoughts. Christians often feel a liberty to murmur
against man, when they would not dare to murmur against God. But this way of
receiving things would make it impossible ever to murmur. If our Father permits
a trial to come, it must be because that trial is the sweetest and best thing
that could happen to us, and we must accept it with thanks from His dear hand.
The trial itself may be hard to flesh and blood, and I do not mean that we can
like or enjoy the suffering of it. But we can and must love the will of God in
the trial, for His will is always sweet, whether it be in joy or in sorrow.
Our trials may be our chariots. We long for some
victory over sin and self, and we ask God to grant it to us. His answer comes
in the form of a trial which He means shall be the chariot to bear us to the
longed-for triumph. We may either let it roll over us and crush us as a
Juggernaut car, or we may mount into it and ride triumphantly onward. Joseph's
chariots, which bore him on to the place of his exaltation, were the trials of
being sold into slavery, and being cast unjustly into prison. Our chariots may
be much more insignificant things than these; they may be nothing but
irritating people or uncomfortable circumstances. But whatever they are, God
means them to be our cars of triumph, which shall bear us onward to the
victories we have prayed for. If we are impatient in our dispositions and long
to be made patient, our chariot will probably be a trying person to live in the
house with us, whose ways or words will rasp our very souls. If we accept the
trial as from God, and bow our necks to the yoke, we shall find it just the
discipline that will most effectually produce in us the very grace of patience
for which we have asked.
God does not order the wrong thing, but He uses
it for our blessing; just as He used the cruelty of Joseph's wicked brethren,
and the false accusations of Pharaoh's wife. In short, this way of seeing our
Father in everything makes life one long thanksgiving, and gives a rest of
heart, and more than that, a gayety of spirit, that is unspeakable. Someone
says, "God's will on earth is always joy, always tranquillity." And since He
must have His own way concerning His children, into what wonderful green
pastures of inward rest, and beside what blessedly still waters of inward
refreshment, is the soul led that learns this secret.
If the will of God is our will, and if He always
has His way, then we always have our way also, and we reign in a perpetual
kingdom. He who sides with God cannot fail to win in every encounter; and
whether the result shall be joy or sorrow, failure or success, death or life,
we may, under all circumstances, join in the apostle's shout of victory,
"Thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ!"
Chapter 9
GROWTH
When the believer has been brought to the point of entire surrender and perfect
trust, and finds himself dwelling and walking in a life of happy communion and
perfect peace, the question naturally arises, "Is this the end?" I answer
emphatically "No, it is only the beginning."
And yet this is so little understood, that
one of the greatest objections made against the advocates of this life of
faith, is, that they do not believe in growth in grace. They are supposed to
teach that the soul arrives at a state of perfection beyond which there is no
advance, and that all the exhortations in the Scripture which point towards
growth and development are rendered void by this teaching.
As exactly the opposite of this is true, I have
thought it important next to consider this subject carefully, that I may, if
possible, fully answer such objections, and may also show what is the
scriptural place to grow in, and how the soul is to grow.
The text which is most frequently quoted is
2 Pet, 3:18,
"But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ."
Now this text exactly expresses what we believe to be God's will
for us, and what also we believe He has made it possible for us to experience.
We accept, in their very fullest meaning, all the commands and promises
concerning our being no more children, and our growing up into Christ in all
things, until we come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of
the fulness of Christ. We rejoice that we need not continue always to be babes,
needing milk; but that we may, by reason of use and development become such as
have need of strong meat, skilful in the word of righteousness, and able to
discern both good and evil. And none would grieve more than we at the thought
of any finality in the Christian life beyond which there could be no
advance.
But then we believe in a growing that does really
produce maturity, and in a development that, as a fact, does bring forth ripe
fruit. We expect to reach the aim set before us, and if we do not, we feel sure
there must be some fault in our growing. No parent would be satisfied with the
growth of his child, if, day after day, and year after year, it remained the
same helpless babe it was in the first months of its life; and no farmer would
feel comfortable under such growing of his grain as should stop short at the
blade, and never produce the ear, nor the full corn in the ear. Growth, to be
real, must be progressive, and the days and weeks and months must see a
development and increase of maturity in the thing growing. But is this the case
with a large part of that which is called growth in grace? Does not the very
Christian who is the most strenuous in his longings and in his efforts after
it, too often find that at the end of the year he is not as far on in his
Christian experience as at the beginning, and that his zeal, and his
devotedness, and his separation from the world are not as whole-souled or
complete as when his Christian life first began?
I was once urging upon a company of Christians
the privileges and rest of an immediate and definite step into the land of
promise, when a lady of great intelligence interrupted me, with what she
evidently felt to be a complete rebuttal of all I had been saying, exclaiming,
"Ah! but, my dear friend, I believe in growing in grace." "How long have you
been growing?" I asked. "About twenty-five years," was her answer. "And how
much more unworldly and devoted to the Lord are you now than when you began
your Christian life?" I continued. "Alas!" was the answer, "I fear I am not
nearly so much so"; and with this answer her eyes were opened to see that at
all events her way of growing had not been successful, but quite the
reverse.
The trouble with her, and every other such case,
is simply this, they are trying to grow into grace, instead of in it. They are
like a rosebush which the gardener should plant in the hard, stony path, with a
view to its growing into the flower-bed, and which would of course dwindle and
wither in consequence, instead of flourishing and maturing. The children of
Israel wandering in the wilderness are a perfect picture of this sort of
growing. They were travelling about for forty years, taking many weary steps,
and finding but
little rest from their wanderings,
and yet, at the end of it all, were no nearer the promised land than they were at the beginning. When
they started on their wanderings at Kadesh Barnea, they were at the borders of
the land, and a few steps would have taken them into it.
When they ended their wanderings in the plains of
Moab, they were also at its borders; only with this great difference, that now
there was a river to cross, which at first there would not have been. All their
wanderings and fightings in the wilderness had not put them in possession of
one inch of the promised land. In order to get possession of this land it was
necessary first to be in it; and in order to
grow in grace,
it is necessary first to be planted in grace. But when once in the land, their conquest was
very rapid; and when once planted in grace, the growth of the soul in one month
will exceed that of years in any other soil. For grace is a most fruitful soil,
and the plants that grow therein are plants of a marvellous growth. They are
tended by a Divine Husbandman, and are warmed by the Sun of Righteousness, and
watered by the dew from Heaven. Surely it is no wonder that they bring forth
fruit, "some an hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thity-fold."
Amazing GraceMidi Hymn by John Newton |
To grow in grace is opposed to all self-dependence, to all self-effort, to all legality of every kind. It is to put our growing, as well as everything else, into the hands of the Lord, and leave it with Him. It is to be so satisfied with our Husbandman, and with His skill and wisdom, that not a question will cross our minds as to His modes of treatment or His plan of cultivation. It is to grow as the lilies grow, or as the babes grow, without a care and without anxiety; to grow by the power of an inward life principle that cannot help but grow; to grow because we live and therefore must grow; to grow because He who has planted us has planted a growing thing, and has made us to grow.
Surely this is what our Lord meant when He said
"Consider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and
yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
of these." Or, when He says again, "Which of you by taking thought can add one
cubit unto his stature?" There is no effort in the growing of a child or of a
lily. They do not toil nor spin, they do not stretch nor strain, they do not
make any effort of any kind to grow; they are not conscious even that they are
growing; but by an inward life principle, and through the nurturing care of
God's providence, and the fostering of caretaker or gardener, by the heat of
the sun and the falling of the rain, they grow and grow.And the result is sure. Even Solomon, our Lord says, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Solomon's array cost much toiling and spinning, and gold and silver in abundance, but the lily's array costs none of these. And though we may toil and spin to make for ourselves beautiful spiritual garments, and may strain and stretch in our efforts after spiritual growth, we shall accomplish nothing; for no man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature; and no array of ours can ever equal the beautiful dress with which the great Husbandman clothes the plants that grow in His garden of grace and under His fostering care.
If I could but make each one of my readers realize how utterly helpless we are in this matter of growing, I am convinced a large part of the strain would be taken out of many lives at once. Imagine a child possessed of the monomania that he would not grow unless he made some personal effort after it, and who should insist upon a combination of rope and pulleys whereby to stretch himself up to the desired height. He might, it is true, spend his days and years in a weary strain, but after all there would be no change in the inexorable fact, "No man by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature"; and his years of labor would be only wasted, if they did not really hinder the longed-for end.
Imagine a lily trying to clothe itself in beautiful colors and graceful lines, stretching its leaves and stems to make them grow, and seeking to manage the clouds and the sunshine, that its needs might be all judiciously supplied!
And yet in these two pictures we have, I conceive, only too true a picture of what many Christians are trying to do; who, knowing they ought to grow, and feeling within them an instinct that longs for growth, yet think to accomplish it by toiling, and spinning, and stretching, and straining, and pass their lives in such a round of self-effort as is a weariness to contemplate.
Grow, dear friends, but grow, I beseech you, in God's way, which is the only effectual way. See to it that you are planted in grace, and then let the Divine Husbandman cultivate you in His own way and by His own means. Put yourselves out in the sunshine of His presence, and let the dew of heaven come down upon you, and see what will come of it. Leaves and flowers and fruit must surely come in their season, for your Husbandman is a skilful one, and He never fails in His harvesting. Only see to it that you interpose no hindrance to the shining of the Sun of Righteousness or the falling of the dew from Heaven. A very thin covering may serve to keep off the heat or the moisture, and the plant may wither even in their midst; and the slightest barrier between your soul and Christ may cause you to dwindle and fade as a plant in a cellar or under a bushel. Keep the sky clear. Open wide every avenue of your being to receive the blessed influences our Divine Husbandman may bring to bear upon you. Bask in the sunshine of His love. Drink in of the waters of His goodness. Keep your face up-turned to Him. Look, and your soul shall live.
You need make no efforts to grow; but let your efforts instead be all concentrated on this, that you abide in the Vine. [John 15:4-5] The Husbandman who has the care of the vine, will care for its branches also, and will so prune and purge and water and tend them that they will grow and bring forth fruit, and their fruit shall remain; and, like the lily, they shall find themselves arrayed in apparel so glorious that that of Solomon will be as nothing to it.
What if you seem to yourselves to be planted at
this moment in a desert soil where nothing can grow! Put yourself absolutely
into the hands of the great Husbandman, and He will at once make that desert
blossom as the rose, and will cause springs and fountains of water to start up
out of its sandy wastes; for the promise is sure, that the man who trusts in
the Lord
"shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her
roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be
green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease
from yielding fruit."
[Psa. 1:3]
It is the great prerogative of our Divine Husbandman that
He is able to turn any soil, whatever it may be like, into the soil of grace,
the moment we put our growing into His hands. He does not need to transplant us
into a different field, but right where we are, with just the circumstances
that surround us, He makes His sun to shine and His dew to fall upon us, and
transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances into the
chiefest and most blessed means of our growth. I care not what the
circumstances may be, His wonder-working power can accomplish this. And we must
trust Him with it all. Surely He is a Husbandman we can trust. And if He sends
storms, or winds, or rains, or sunshine, all must be accepted at His hands with
the most unwavering confidence that He who has undertaken to cultivate us, and
to bring us to maturity, knows the very best way of accomplishing His end, and
regulates the elements, which are all at His disposal, expressly with a view to
our most rapid growth.Let me entreat of you, then, to give up all your efforts after growing, and simply to let yourselves grow. Leave it all to the Husbandman, whose care it is, and who alone is able to manage it. No difficulties in your case can baffle Him. No dwarfing of your growth in years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in any of your past development, can in the least mar the perfect work that He will accomplish, if you will only put yourselves absolutely into His hands, and let Him have His own way with you. His own gracious promise to His backsliding children assures you of this. "I will heal their backslidings," He says: "I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine; the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon." [Hosea_14:4-7] And again He says, "Be not afraid, for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig-tree and the vine do yield their strength. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten; and ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who hath dealt wondrously with you; and my people shall never be ashamed." [Joel_2:21-26]
Oh! that you could but know just what your Lord meant when He said, "Consider the lilies, how they grow; for they toil not, neither do they spin." [Matt._6:28-30] Surely these words give us a picture of a life and of a growth far different from the ordinary life and growth of Christians; a life of rest, and a growth without effort; and yet a life and a growth crowned with glorious results. And to every soul that will thus become a lily in the garden of the Lord, and will grow as the lilies grow, the same glorious array will be surely given as is given them; and they will know the fulfilment of that wonderful mystical passage concerning their Beloved, that "He feedeth among the lilies." [Song_2:16]
This is the sort of growth in grace in which we who have entered into the life of full trust believe: a growth which brings the desired results, which blossoms out into flower and fruit, and becomes a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; whose leaf also does not wither, and who prospers in whatsoever he doeth. And we rejoice to know that there are growing up now in the Lord's heritage many such plants, who, as the lilies behold the face of the sun and grow thereby, are, by beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, being changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.
Should you ask such, how it is that they grow so rapidly and with such success, their answer would be that they are not concerned about their growing, and are hardly conscious that they do grow; that their Lord has told them to abide in Him, and has promised that if they do thus abide, they shall certainly bring forth much fruit; and that they are concerned only about the abiding, which is their part, and leave the cultivating and the growing and the training and pruning to their good Husbandman, who alone is able to manage these things or bring them about. [John_15:1-7] You will find that such souls are not engaged in watching self, but in looking unto Jesus. They do not toil nor spin for their spiritual garments, but leave themselves in the hands of the Lord to be arrayed as it may please Him. Self-effort and self-dependence are at an end with them. Their interest in self is gone, transferred over into the hands of another. Self has become really nothing, and Christ alone is all in all to such as these. And the blessed result is, that not even Solomon, in all his glory, was arrayed like these shall be.
Let us look at this subject practically. We all
know that growing is not a thing of effort, but is the result of an inward
life, a principle of growth. All the stretching and pulling in the world could
not make a dead oak grow. But a live oak grows without stretching. It is plain,
therefore, that the essential thing is to get within you the growing life, and
then you cannot help but grow. And this life is the
life hid with Christ
in God,
the wonderful divine life of an indwelling Holy Ghost. Be filled with
this, dear believer, and, whether you are conscious of it or not, you must
grow, you cannot help growing. Do not trouble about your growing, but see to it
that you have the growing life.
Abide in the Vine.
Let the life from Him flow
through all your spiritual veins. Interpose no barrier to His mighty
life-giving power, working in you all
the good pleasure of His will.
Yield yourself up utterly to His sweet control. Put your growing into His hands, as
completely as you have put all your other affairs. Suffer Him to manage it as
He will. Do not concern yourself about it, nor even think of it. Trust Him
absolutely, and always. Accept each moment's dispensation as it comes to you,
from His dear hands, as being the needed sunshine or dew for that moment's
growth. Say a continual "Yes" to your Father's will.Heretofore you have perhaps tried, as so many do, to be both the lily and the gardener, both the vineyard and the husbandman. You have taken upon your shoulders the burdens and responsibilities that belong only to the Divine Husbandman, and which He alone is able to bear. Henceforth consent to take your rightful place and to be only what you really are. Say to yourself, If I am the garden only, and not the gardener, if I am the vine only, and not the husbandman, it is surely essential to my right growth and well being that I should keep the place and act the part of the garden, and should not usurp the gardener's place, nor try to act the gardener's part.
Do not seek then to choose your own soil, nor the laying out of your borders; do not plant your own seeds, nor dig about, nor prune, nor watch over your own vines. Be content with what the Divine Husbandman arranges for you, and with the care He gives. Let Him choose the sort of plants and fruits He sees best to cultivate, and grow a potato as gladly as a rose, if such be His will, and homely everyday virtues as willingly as exalted fervors. Be satisfied with the seasons He sends, with the sunshine and rain He gives, with the rapidity or slowness of your growth, in short, with all His dealings and processes, no matter how little we may comprehend them.
There is infinite repose in this. As the viole rests in its little nook, receiving contentedly its daily portion satisfied to let rains fall, and suns rise, and the earth to whirl, without one anxious pang, so must we repose in the present as God gives it to us, accepting contentedly our daily portion, and with no anxiety as to all that may be whirling around us, in His great creative and redemptive plan.
|
The wind that blows can never kill
the tree God plants.
It bloweth east, it bloweth west,
The tender leaves have little rest;
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree God plants
strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads wider boughs, for God's good-will;
meets all its wants.
There is no frost hath power to blight the tree God shields. The roots are warm beneath soft snows; and when spring comes it surely knows, And every bud to blossom grows. The tree God shields grows on apace by day and night; till, sweet to taste and fair to sight, its fruit it yields. |
|
There is no storm hath power to blast
the tree God knows.
No thunder-bolt, nor beating rain,
nor lightning flash, nor hurricane;
when they are spent it doth remain.
The tree God knows
through every tempest standeth fast;
and, from its first day to its last,
still fairer grows.
A seed God sows -- A little seed -- it soon will grow, And far and near all men will know For heavenly land He bids it blow. A seed God sows, And up it springs by day and night; Through life, through death, it groweth right, Forever grows. |
Chapter 10
SERVICE
There is, perhaps, no part of Christian experience where a greater change is
known upon entering into the
life hid with Christ
in God,
than in the matter of service.
In all the lower forms of Christian life, service is apt to have more or less
of bondage in it; that is, it is one purely as a matter of duty, and often as a
trial and a cross. Certain things, which at the first may have been a joy and
delight, become weary tasks, performed faithfully, perhaps, but with much
secret disinclination, and many confessed or unconfessed wishes that they need
not be done at all, or at least that they need not be done so often. The soul
finds itself saying, instead of the "May I" of love, the "Must I" of duty. The
yoke, which was at first easy, begins to gall, and the burden feels heavy
instead of light.
One dear Christian expressed it once to me in
this way. "When I was first converted," she said, "I was so full of joy and
love that I was only too glad and thankful to be allowed to do anything for my
Lord, and I eagerly entered every open door. But after a while, as my early joy
faded away, and my love burned less fervently, I began to wish I had not been
quite so eager; for I found myself involved in lines of service which were
gradually becoming very distasteful and burdensome to me. I could not very well
give them up, since I had begun them, without exciting great remark, and yet I
longed to do so increasingly. I was expected to visit the sick, and pray beside
their beds. I was expected to attend prayer-meetings, and speak at them. I was
expected to be always ready for every effort in Christian work, and the sense
of these expectations bowed me down continually. At last it became so
unspeakably burdensome to me to live the sort of Christian life I had entered
upon, and was expected by all around me to live, that I felt as if any kind of
manual labor would have been easier, and I would have preferred, infinitely,
scrubbing all day on my hands and knees, to being compelled to go through the
treadmill of my daily Christian work. I envied," she said, "the servants in the
kitchen, and the women at the wash-tubs."
This may seem to some like a strong statement:
but does it not present a vivid picture of some of your own experiences, dear
Christian? Have you never gone to your work as a slave to his daily task,
knowing it to be your duty, and that therefore you must do it, but rebounding
like an india-rubber ball back into your real interests and pleasures the
moment your work was over?
Of course you have known this was the wrong way
to feel, and have been ashamed of it from the bottom of your heart, but still
you have seen no way to help it. You have not loved your work, and, could you
have done so with an easy conscience, you would have been glad to have given it
up altogether.
Or, if this does not describe your case, perhaps
another picture will. You do love your work in the abstract; but, in the doing
of it, you find so many cares and responsibilities connected with it, so many
misgivings and doubts as to your own capacity or fitness, that it becomes a
very heavy burden, and you go to it bowed down and weary, before the labor has
even begun. Then also you are continually distressing yourself about the
results of your work, and greatly troubled if they are not just what you would
like, and this of itself is a constant burden.
Now from all these forms of bondage the soul is
entirely delivered that enters fully into the blessed life of faith. In the
first place, service of any sort becomes delightful to it, because, having
surrendered its will into the keeping of the Lord, He works in it
to will
and to do of His good pleasure,
and the soul finds itself really wanting to do the
things God wants it to do. It is always very pleasant to do the things we want
to do, let them be ever so difficult of accomplishment, or involve ever so much
of bodily weariness. If a man's will is really set on a thing, he regards with
a sublime indifference the obstacles that lie in the way of his reaching it,
and laughs to himself at the idea of any opposition or difficulties hindering
him.
How many men have gone gladly and thankfully to the ends of the world in
search of worldly fortunes, or to fulfil worldly ambitions, and have scorned
the thoughts of any cross connected with it! How many mothers have
congratulated themselves and rejoiced over the honor done their sons in being
promoted to some place of power and usefulness in their country's service,
although it has involved perhaps years of separation, and a life of hardship
for their dear ones? And yet these same men and these very mothers would have
felt and said that they were taking up crosses too heavy almost to be borne,
had the service of Christ required the same sacrifice of home, and friends, and
worldly ease. It is altogether the way we look at things, whether we think they
are crosses or not. And I am ashamed to think that any Christian should ever
put on a long face and shed tears over doing a thing for Christ, which a
worldly man would be only too glad to do for money.
What we need in the Christian life is to get
believers to want to do God's will, as much as other people want to do their
own will. And this is the idea of the Gospel. It is what God intended for us;
and it is what He has promised. In describing the new covenant in
Heb. 8:6-13,
He says it shall no more be the old covenant made on Sinai, that is, a law
given from the outside, controlling a man by force, but it shall be a law
written within constraining a man by love. "I will put my laws," He says, "in
their mind, and write them in their hearts." This can mean nothing but that we
shall love His law, for anything written on our hearts we must love. And
putting it into our minds is surely the same as God working in us
"to will
and to do of His good pleasure",
and means that we shall will what God wills, and
shall obey His sweet commands, not because it is our duty to do so, but because
we ourselves want to do what He wants us to do. Nothing could possibly be
conceived more effectual than this. How often have we thought when dealing with
our children, "Oh, if I could only get inside of them and make them want to do
just what I want, how easy it would be to manage them then!" And how often
practically in experience we have found that, to deal with cross-grained
people, we must carefully avoid suggesting our wishes to them, but must in some
way induce them to suggest them themselves, sure that then there will be no
opposition to contend with. And we, who are by nature
a
stiff-necked people,
always rebel more or less against a law from outside of us,
while we joyfully embrace the same law springing up within.
God's plan for us therefore is to get possession
of the inside of a man, to take the control and management of his will, and to
work it for him; and then obedience is easy and a delight, and service becomes
perfect freedom, until the Christian is forced to exclaim, "This happy service!
Who could dream earth had such liberty?"
What you need to do then, dear Christian,
if you are in bondage,
is to put your will over completely into the hands of your
Lord, surrendering to Him the entire control of it. Say, "Yes, Lord, YES!" to
everything; and trust Him so to work in you to will, as to bring your whole
wishes and affections into conformity with His own sweet and lovable and most
lovely will. I have seen this done over and over, in cases where it looked
beforehand an utterly impossible thing. In one case, where a lady had been for
years rebelling fearfully against a thing which she knew was right, but which
she hated, I saw her, out of the depths of despair and without any feeling,
give her will in that matter up into the hands of her Lord, and begin to say to
Him, "Thy will be done; thy will be done!" And in one short hour that very
thing began to look sweet and precious to her. It is wonderful what miracles
God works in wills that are utterly surrendered to Him. He turns hard things
into easy, and bitter things into sweet. It is not that He puts easy things in
the place of the hard, but He actually changes the hard thing into an easy one.
And this is salvation. It is grand. Do try it, you who are going about your
daily Christian living as to a hard and weary task, and see if your divine
Master will not transform
the very life you live now as a bondage,
into the most delicious liberty!
Or again, if you do love His will in the
abstract, but find the doing of it hard and burdensome, from this also there is
deliverance in the wonderful life of faith. For in this life no burdens are
carried, nor anxieties felt. The Lord is our burden-bearer, and upon Him we
must lay off every care. He says, in effect,
Be careful for nothing, but just
make your requests known to Me, and I will attend to them all. Be careful for
nothing, He says, not even your service. Above all, I should think, our
service, because we know ourselves to be so utterly helpless in this, that even
if we were careful, it would not amount to anything. What have we to do with
thinking whether we are fit or not! The Master-workman surely has a right to
use any tool He pleases for His own work, and it is plainly not the business of
the tool to decide whether it is the right one to be used or not. He knows; and
if He chooses to use us, of course we must be fit. And in truth, if we only
knew it, our chiefest fitness is in our utter helplessness. His strength can
only be made perfect in our weakness. I can give you a convincing illustration
of this.
I was once visiting an idiot asylum and looking
at the children going through dumb-bell exercises. Now we all know that it is a
very difficult thing for idiots to manage their movements. They have strength
enough, generally, but no skill to use this strength, and as a consequence
cannot do much. And in these dumb-bell exercises this deficiency was very
apparent. They made all sorts of awkward movements. Now and then, by a happy
chance, they would make a movement in harmony with the music and the teacher's
directions, but for the most part all was out of harmony. One little girl,
however, I noticed, who made perfect movements. Not a jar nor a break disturbed
the harmony of her exercises. And the reason was, not that she had more
strength than the others, but that she had no strength at all. She could not so
much as close her hands over the dumb-bells, nor lift her arms, and the master
had to stand behind her and do it all. She yielded up her members as
instruments to him, and his strength was made perfect in her weakness. He knew
how to go through those exercises, for he himself had planned them, and
therefore when he did it, it was done right. She did nothing but yield herself
up utterly into his hands, and he did it all. The yielding was her part, the
responsibility was all his. It was not her skill that was needed to make
harmonious movements, but only his. The question was not of her capacity, but
of his. Her utter weakness was her greatest strength. And if this is a picture
of our Christian life, it is no wonder that Paul could say,
"Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me."
Who would not glory in being so utterly weak and helpless, that
the Lord Jesus Christ should find no hindrance to the perfect working of His
mighty power through us and in us?
Then, too, if the work is His, the responsibility
is His, and we have no room left for worrying about it. Everything in reference
to it is known to Him, and He can manage it all. Why not leave it all with Him
then, and consent to be treated like a child and guided where to go. It is a
fact that the most effectual workers I know are those who do not feel the least
care or anxiety about their work, but who commit it all to their dear Master,
and, asking Him to guide them moment by moment in reference to it, trust Him
implicitly for each moment's needed supplies of wisdom and of strength. To see
such, you would almost think perhaps that they were too free from care, where
such mighty interests are at stake. But when you have learned God's secret of
trusting, and see the beauty and the power of that life which is yielded up to
His working, you will cease to condemn, and will begin to wonder how any of
God's workers can dare to carry burdens, or assume responsibilities which He
alone is able to bear.
There are one or two other bonds of service from
which this life of trust delivers us. We find out that we are not responsible
for all the work in the world. The commands cease to be general, and become
personal and individual. The Master does not map out a general course of action
for us and leave us to get along through it by our own wisdom and skill as best
we may, but He leads us step by step, giving us each hour the special guidance
needed for that hour. His blessed Spirit dwelling in us, brings to our
remembrance at the time the necessary command; so that we do not need to take
any thought ahead but simply to take each step as it is made known to us,
following our Lord whithersoever He leads us. "The steps of a good man are
ordered of the Lord" not his way only, but each separate step in that way. Many
Christians make the mistake of expecting to receive God's commands all in a
lump, as it were. They think because He tells them to give a tract to one
person in a railway train, for instance, that He means them always to give
tracts to everybody, and they burden themselves with an impossible command.
There was a young Christian once, who, because
the Lord had sent her to speak a message to one soul whom she met in a walk,
took it as a general command for always, and thought she must speak to every
one she met about their souls. This was, of course, impossible, and as a
consequence she was soon in hopeless bondage about it. She became absolutely
afraid to go outside of her own door, and lived in perpetual condemnation. At
last she disclosed her distress to a friend who was instructed in the ways of
God with His servants, and this friend told her she was making a great mistake;
that the Lord had His own especial work for each especial workman, and that the
servants in a well-regulated household might as well each one take it upon
himself to try and do the work of all the rest, as for the Lord's servants to
think they were each one under obligation to do everything. He told her just to
put herself under the Lord's personal guidance as to her work, and trust Him to
point out to her each particular person to whom He would have her speak,
assuring her that He never puts forth His own sheep without going before them,
and making a way for them Himself. She followed this advice, and laid the
burden of her work on the Lord, and the result was a happy pathway of daily
guidance, in which she was led into much blessed work for her Master, but was
able to do it all without a care or a burden, because He led her out and
prepared the way before her.
Putting ourselves into God's hands in this way,
seems to me just like making the junction between the machinery and the steam
engine. The power is not in the machinery, but in the steam; disconnected from
the engine, the machinery is perfectly useless; but let the connection be made,
and the machinery goes easily and without effort, because of the mighty power
there is behind it. Thus the Christian life becomes an easy, natural life when
it is the development of the divine working within. Most Christians live on a
strain, because their wills are not fully in harmony with the will of God, the
connection is not perfectly made at every point, and it requires an effort to
move the machinery. But when once the connection is fully made, and the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus can work in us with all its mighty power, we
are then indeed made free from the law of sin and death, and shall know the
glorious liberty of the children of God. We shall lead frictionless lives.
Another form of bondage as to service, from which
the life of faith delivers the soul, is in reference to the after-reflections
which always follow any Christian work. These self-reflections are of two
sorts. Either the soul congratulates itself upon its success, and is lifted up;
or it is distressed over its failure, and is utterly cast down. One of these is
sure to come, and of the two I think the first is the more to be dreaded,
although the last causes at the time the greater suffering. But in the life of
trust, neither will trouble us; for, having committed ourselves and our work to
the Lord, we will be satisfied to leave it to Him, and will not think about
ourselves in the matter at all.
Years ago I came across this sentence in an old
book: "Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self-reflective acts of
any kind, whether of self-congratulation or of self-despair. Forget the things
that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God." It has been
of unspeakable value to me. When the temptation comes, as it always does, to
indulge in these reflections, either of one sort or the other, I turn from them
at once, and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with
the Lord to overrule the mistakes, and to, bless it as He chooses.
To sum it all up then, what is needed for happy
and effectual service is simply to put your work into the Lord's hands, and
leave it there. Do not take it to Him in prayer, saying, "Lord, guide me; Lord,
give me wisdom; Lord, arrange for me," and then arise from your knees, and take
the burden all back, and try to guide and arrange for yourself. Leave it with
the Lord, and remember that what you trust to Him, you must not worry over nor
feel anxious about. Trust and worry cannot go together. If your work is a
burden, it is because you are not trusting it to Him. But if you do trust it to
Him, you will surely find that the yoke He puts upon you is easy, and the
burden He gives you to carry is light, and even in the midst of a life of
ceaseless activity
you shall find rest to your soul.
But some may say that this teaching would make us
into mere puppets. I answer, No, it would simply make us into servants. It is
required of a servant, not that he shall plan, or arrange, or decide, or supply
the necessary material, but simply and only that he shall obey. It is for the
Master to do all the rest. The servant is not responsible, either, for results.
The Master alone knows what results he wished to have produced, and therefore
he alone can judge of them. Intelligent service will, of course, include some
degree of intelligent sympathy with the thoughts and plans of the Master, but
after all there cannot be a full comprehension, and the responsibility cannot
be transferred from the Master's shoulders to the servant's. And in our case,
where our outlook is so limited and our ignorance so great, we can do very
little more than be in harmony with the will of our Divine Master, without
expecting to comprehend it very fully, and we must leave all the results with
Him. What looks to us like failure on the seen side, is often, on the unseen
side, the most glorious success; and if we allow ourselves to lament and worry,
we shall often be doing the foolish and useless thing of weeping where we ought
to be singing and rejoicing.
Far better is it to refuse utterly to indulge in
any self-reflective acts at all; to refuse, in fact, to think about self in any
way, whether for good or evil. We are not our own property, nor our own
business. We belong to God, and are His instruments and His business; and since
He always attends to His own business, He will of course attend to us.
I heard once of a slave who was on board a vessel
in a violent storm, and who was whistling contentedly while every one else was
in an agony of terror. At last someone asked him if he was not afraid he would
be drowned. He replied with a broad grin, "Well, missus, s'pose I is. I don't
b'long to myself, and it will only be massa's loss any how."
Something of this spirit would deliver us from
many of our perplexities and sufferings in service. And with a band of servants
thus abandoned to our Master's use and to His care, what might He not
accomplish? Truly one such would "chase a thousand, and two would put ten
thousand to flight"; and nothing would be impossible to them. For it is nothing
with the Lord "to help, whether with many or with them that have no power."
May God raise up such an army speedily!
And may you, my dear reader enroll your name in
this army today and, yielding yourself unto God as one who is alive from the
dead, may every one of your members be also yielded unto Him as instruments of
righteousness, to be used by Him as He pleases.
Prayers, Comments,