My Utmost for His Highest, page 2
Beware of the inclination to dictate to God as to what you wil al ow to happen if you obey Him.
January 12th.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE WITH GOD?
"When they were alone, He expounded all things to His disciples." Mark 4:34
Our Solitude with Him. Jesus does not take us alone and expound things to us al the time; He expounds things to us as we can understand them. Other lives are parables. God is making us spel out our own souls. It is slow work, so slow that it takes God al time and eternity to make a man and woman after His own purpose. The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves! We do not know envy when we see it, or laziness, or pride. Jesus reveals to us al that this body has been harbouring before His grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look in with courage?
We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves, it is the last conceit to go. The only One Who understands us is God. The greatest curse in spiritual life is conceit. If we have ever had a glimpse of what we are like in the sight of God, we shal never say - "Oh, I am so unworthy," because we shal know we are, beyond the possibility of stating it. As long as we are not quite sure that we are unworthy, God wil keep narrowing us in until He gets us alone. Wherever there is any element of pride or of conceit, Jesus cannot expound a thing. He wil take us through the disappointment of a wounded pride of intel ect, through disappointment of heart. He wil reveal inordinate affection - things over which we never thought He would have to get us alone. We listen to many things in classes, but they are not an exposition to us yet. They wil be when God gets us alone over them.
January 13th.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE WITH GOD?
"When He was alone the twelve . . . asked of Him . . ." Mark 4:10
His Solitude with Us. When God gets us alone by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new fnendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are dumbfounded, and cannot ask one question, then He begins to expound. Watch Jesus Christ's training of the twelve. It was the disciples, not the crowd outside, who were perplexed. They constantly asked Him questions, and He constantly expounded things to them; but they only understood after they had received the Holy Spirit (see John 14:26).
If you are going on with God, the only thing that is clear to you, and the only thing God intends to be clear, is the way He deals with your own soul. Your brother's sorrows and perplexities are an absolute confusion to you. We imagine we understand where the other person is, until God gives us a dose of the plague of our own hearts. There are whole tracts of stubbornness and ignorance to be revealed by the Holy Spirit in each one of us, and it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone. Are we alone with Him now, or are we taken up with little fussy notions, fussy comradeships in God's service, fussy ideas about our bodies? Jesus can expound nothing until we get through al the noisy questions of the head and are alone with Him.
January 14th.
CALLED OF GOD
"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." Isaiah 6:8
God did not address the cal to Isaiah; Isaiah overheard God saying, "Who wil go for us?" The cal of God is not for the special few, it is for everyone.
Whether or not I hear God's cal depends upon the state of my ears; and what I hear depends upon my disposition. "Many are cal ed but few are chosen,"
that is, few prove themselves the chosen ones. The chosen ones are those who have come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ whereby their disposition has been altered and their ears unstopped, and they hear the stil smal voice questioning al the time, "Who wil go for us?" It is not a question of God singling out a man and saying, "Now, you go." God did not lay a strong compulsion on Isaiah; Isaiah was in the presence of God and he overheard the cal , and realized that there was nothing else for him but to say, in conscious freedom, "Here am I, send me." Get out of your mind the idea of expecting God to come with compulsions and pleadings. When our Lord cal ed His disciples there was no irresistible compulsion from outside. The quiet passionate insistence of His "Fol ow Me" was spoken to men with every power wide awake. If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shal hear something akin to what Isaiah heard, the stil smal voice of God; and in perfect freedom wil say, "Here am I; send me."
January 15th.
DO YOU WALK IN WHITE?
"Buried with Him . . . that . . . even so we also should walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4
No one enters into the experience of entire sanctification without going through a "white funeral" - the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crisis of death, sanctification is nothing more than a vision. There must be a "white funeral," - a death that has only one resurrection - a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can upset such a life, it is one with God for one purpose, to be a witness to Him.
Have you come to your last days real y? You have come to them often in sentiment, but have you come to them really? You cannot go to your funeral in excitement, or die in excitement. Death means you stop being. Do you agree with God that you stop being the striving, earnest kind of Christian you have been? We skirt the cemetery and al the time refuse to go to death. It is not striving to go to death, it is dying - "baptized into His death."
Have you had your "white funeral," or are you sacredly playing the fool with your soul? Is there a place in your life marked as the last day, a place to which the memory goes back with a chastened and extraordinarily grateful remembrance - "Yes, it was then, at that 'white funeral,' that I made an agreement with God."
"This is the wil of God, even your sanctification." When you realize what the will of God is, you wil enter into sanctification as natural y as can be. Are you wil ing to go through that "white funeral" now? Do you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends upon you.
January 16th.
THE VOICE OF THE NATURE OF GOD
"I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send?" Isaiah 6:8
When we speak of the cal of God, we are apt to forget the most important feature, viz., the nature of the One Who cal s. There is the cal of the sea, the cal of the mountains, the cal of the great ice barriers, but these cal s are only heard by the few. The cal is the expression of the nature from which it comes, and we can only record the cal if the same nature is in us. The cal of God is the expression of God's nature, not of our nature. There are strands of the cal of God providential y at work for us which we recognize and no one else does. It is the threading of God's voice to us in some particular matter, and it is no use consulting anyone else about it. We have to keep that profound relationship between our souls and God.
The cal of God is not the echo of my nature; my affinities and personal temperament are not considered. As long as I consider my personal temperament and think about what I am fitted for, I shal never hear the cal of God. But when I am brought into relationship with God, I am in the condition Isaiah was in.
Isaiah's soul was so attuned to God by the tremendous crisis he had gone through that he recorded the cal of God to his amazed soul. The majority of us have no ear for anything but ourselves, we cannot hear a thing God says. To be brought into the zone of the cal of God is to be profoundly altered.
January 18th.
IT IS THE LORD!
"Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God." John 20:2
"Give Me to drink." How many of us are set upon Jesus Christ slaking our thirst when we ought to be satisfying Him? We should be pouring out now, spending to the last limit, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. "Ye shal be witnesses unto Me" - that means a life of unsul ied, uncompromising and unbribed devotion to the Lord Jesus, a satisfaction to Him wherever He places us.
Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him. It is easier to serve than to be drunk to the dregs. The one aim of the cal of God is the satisfaction of God, not a cal to do something for Him. We are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. Are we being more devoted to service than to Jesus Christ?
January 19th.
VISION AND DARKNESS
"An horror of great darkness fell upon him." Genesis 15:1
Whenever God gives a vision to a saint, He puts him, as it were, in the shadow of His hand, and the saint's duty is to be stil and listen. There is a darkness which comes from excess of light, and then is the time to listen. Genesis 16 is an il ustration of listening to good advice when it is dark instead of waiting for God to send the light. When God gives a vision and darkness fol ows, wait. God wil make you in accordance with the vision He has given if you wil wait His time. Never try and help God fulfil His word. Abraham went through thirteen years of silence, but in those years al self-sufficiency was destroyed; there was no possibility left of relying on common-sense ways. Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not of displeasure. Never pump up joy and confidence, but stay upon God (cf. Isaiah 1:10,11).
Have I any confidence in the flesh? Or have I got beyond al confidence in myself and in men and women of God; in books and prayers and ecstasies; and is my confidence placed now in God Himself, not in His blessings? "I am the Almighty God" - El-Shaddai, the Father-Mother God. The one thing for which we are al being disciplined is to know that God is real. As soon as God becomes real, other people become shadows. Nothing that other saints do or say can ever perturb the one who is built on God.
January 20th.
ARE YOU FRESH FOR EVERYTHING?
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." John 3:3
Sometimes we are fresh for a prayer meeting but not fresh for cleaning boots!
Being born again of the Spirit is an unmistakable work of God, as mysterious as the wind, as surprising as God Himself. We do not know where it begins, it is hidden away in the depths of our personal life. Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning; a freshness al the time in thinking and in talking and in living, the continual surprise of the life of God. Staleness is an indication of something out of joint with God - "I must do this thing or it wil never be done." That is the first sign of staleness. Are we freshly born this minute or are we stale, raking in our minds for something to do?
Freshness does not come from obedience but from the Holy Spirit; obedience keeps us in the light as God is in the light.
Guard jealously your relationship to God. Jesus prayed "that they may be one, even as we are one" - nothing between. Keep al the life perennial y open to Jesus Christ, don't pretend with Him. Are you drawing your life from any other source than God Himself? If you are depending upon anything but Him, you wil never know when He is gone.
Being born of the Spirit means much more than we general y take it to mean. It gives us a new vision and keeps us absolutely fresh for everything by the perennial supply of the life of God.
January 21st.
RECALL WHAT GOD REMEMBERS
"I remember . . . the kindness of thy youth." Jeremiah 2:2
Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Am I ful of the little things that cheer His heart over me, or am I whimpering because things are going hardly with me? There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes. It is a great thing to think that Jesus Christ has need of me - "Give Me to drink." How much kindness have I shown Him this past week? Have I been kind to His reputation in my life?
God is saying to His people - You are not in love with Me now, but I remember the time when you were - "I remember . . . the love of thine espousals." Am I as ful of the extravagance of love to Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion to Him? Does He find me recal ing the time when I did not care for anything but Himself? Am I there now, or have I become wise over loving Him? Am I so in love with Him that I take no account of where I go? or am I watching for the respect due to me; weighing how much service I ought to give?
If, as I recal what God remembers about me, I find He is not what He used to be to me, let it produce shame and humiliation, because that shame wil bring the godly sorrow that works repentance.
January 22nd.
WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?
"Look unto Me, and be ye saved." Isaiah 14:22
Do we expect God to come to us with His blessings and save us? He says - Look unto Me, and be saved. The great difficulty spiritual y is to concentrate on God, and it is His blessings that make it difficult. Troubles nearly always make us look to God; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere. The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, in effect - Narrow al your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ.
"Look unto Me."
Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God. There is no salvation in this way, it is not simple enough. "Look unto Me" and - not "you wil be saved," but "you are saved." The very thing we look for, we shal find if we wil concentrate on Him. We get preoccupied and sulky with God, while al the time He is saying - "Look up and be saved." The difficulties and trials -
the casting about in our minds as to what we shal do this summer, or to-morrow, al vanish when we look to God.
Rouse yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter if there are a hundred and one things that press, resolutely exclude them al and look to Him. "Look unto Me," and salvation is, the moment you look.
January 23rd.
TRANSFORMED BY INSIGHT
"We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image." 2 Corinthians 3:18
The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives. By being fil ed with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord, you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord's own character. Beware of anything which would sul y that mirror in you; it is nearly always a good thing, the good that is not the best.
The golden rule for your life and mine is this concentrated keeping of the life open towards God. Let everything else - work, clothes, food, everything on earth - go by the board, saving that one thing. The rush of other things always tends to obscure this concentration on God. We have to maintain ourselves in the place of beholding, keeping the life absolutely spiritual al through. Let other things come and go as they may, let other people criticize as they wil , but never al ow anything to obscure the life that is hid with Christ in God. Never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him. It is the one thing that is apt to fluctuate but it ought not to. The severest discipline of a Christian's life is to learn how to keep "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord."
January 24th.
THE OVERMASTERING DIRECTION
"I have appeared unto thee for this purpose." Acts 26:16
The vision Paul had on the road to Damascus was no passing emotion, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic directions for him, and he says, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." Our Lord said, in effect, to Paul - Your whole life is to be overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine. "I have chosen him."
When we are born again we al have visions, if we are spiritual at al , of what Jesus wants us to be, and the great thing is to learn not to be disobedient to the vision, not to say that it cannot be attained. It is not sufficient to know that God has redeemed the world, and to know that the Holy Spirit can make al that Jesus did effectual in me; I must have the basis of a personal relationship to Him. Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus Christ. Verse 16 is immensely commanding - "to make thee a minister and a witness."
There is nothing there apart from the personal relationship. Paul was devoted to a Person not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's, he saw nothing else, he lived for nothing else. "For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."
January 25th.
LEAVE ROOM FOR GOD
"But when it pleased God. . ." Galatians 1:15
As workers for God we have to learn to make room for God - to give God "elbow room." We calculate and estimate, and say that this and that wil happen, and we forget to make room for God to come in as He chooses. Would we be surprised if God came into our meeting or into our preaching in a way we had never looked for Him to come? Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but look for Him. That is the way to make room for Him. Expect Him to come, but do not expect Him only in a certain way. However much we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that at any minute He may break in. We are apt to over look this element of surprise, yet God never works in any other way. Al of a sudden God meets the life - "When it was the good pleasure of God. . ."
Keep your life so constant in its contact with God that His surprising power may break out on the right hand and on the left. Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as He likes.
January 26th.
