My Utmost for His Highest, page 6
March 3rd.
THE UNRELIEVED QUEST
"Feed My sheep." John 21:17
This is love in the making. The love of God is tin-made, it is God's nature. When we receive the Holy Spirit He unites us with God so that His love is manifested in us. When the soul is united to God by the indwel ing Holy Spirit, that is not the end; the end is that we may be one with the Father as Jesus was. What kind of oneness had Jesus Christ with the Father? Such a oneness that the Father sent Him down here to be spent for us, and He says - "As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you."
Peter realizes now with the revelation of the Lord's hurting question that he does love Him; then comes the point - "Spend it out." Don't testify how much you love Me, don't profess about the marvel ous revelation you have had, but - "Feed My sheep." And Jesus has some extraordinarily funny sheep, some bedraggled, dirty sheep, some awkward, butting sheep, some sheep that have gone astray! It is impossible to weary God's love, and it is impossible to weary that love in me if it springs from the one centre. The love of God pays no attention to the distinctions made by natural individuality. If I love my Lord I have no business to be guided by natural temperament; I have to feed His sheep. There is no relief and no release from this commission. Beware of counterfeiting the love of God by working along the line of natural human sympathy, because that wil end in blaspheming the love of God.
March 4th.
COULD THIS BE TRUE OF ME?
"But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself." Acts 20:24
It is easier to serve God without a vision, easier to work for God without a cal , because then you are not bothered by what God requires; common sense is your guide, veneered over with Christian sentiment. You wil be more prosperous and successful, more leisure-hearted, if you never realize the cal of God. But if once you receive a commission from Jesus Christ, the memory of what God wants wil always come like a goad; you wil no longer be able to work for Him on the common-sense basis.
What do I real y count dear? If I have not been gripped by Jesus Christ, I wil count service dear, time given to God dear, my life dear unto myself. Paul says he counted his life dear only in order that he might fulfil the ministry he had received; he refused to use his energy for any other thing. Acts 20:24
states Paul's almost sublime annoyance at being asked to consider himself; he was absolutely indifferent to any consideration other than that of fulfil ing the ministry he had received. Practical work may be a competitor against abandonment to God, because practical work is based on this argument -
Remember how 'useful you are here, or - Think how much value you would be in that particular type of work." That attitude does not put Jesus Christ as the Guide as to where we should go, but our judgment as to where we are of most use. Never consider whether you are of use; but ever consider that you are not your own but His.
March 5th.
IS HE REALLY LORD?
". . . so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus." Acts 20:24
Joy means the perfect fulfilment of that for which I was created and regenerated, not the successful doing of a thing. The joy Our Lord had lay in doing what the Father sent Him to do, and He says - "As My Father hath sent Me, even so am I sending you." Have I received a ministry from the Lord? If so, I have to be loyal to it, to count my life precious only for the fulfil ing of that ministry. Think of the satisfaction it wil be to hear Jesus say - "Wel done, good and faithful servant"; to know that you have done what He sent you to do. We have al to find our niche in life, and spiritual y we find it when we receive our ministry from the Lord. In order to do this we must have companied with Jesus; we must know Him as more than a personal Saviour. "I wil show him how great things he must suffer for My sake."
"Lovest thou Me?" Then - "Feed My sheep." There is no choice of service, only absolute loyalty to Our Lord's commission; loyalty to what you discern when you are in closest contact with God. If you have received a ministry from the Lord Jesus, you wil know that the need is never the cal : the need is the opportunity. The cal is loyalty to the ministry you received when you were in real touch with Him. This does not imply that there is a campaign of service marked out for you, but it does mean that you wil have to ignore the demands for service along other lines.
March 6th.
AMID A CROWD OF PALTRY THINGS
". . . in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses." 2 Corinthians 6:4
It takes Almighty grace to take the next step when there is no vision and no spectator - the next step in devotion, the next step in your study, in your reading, in your kitchen; the next step in your duty, when there is no vision from God, no enthusiasm and no spectator. It takes far more of the grace of God, far more conscious drawing upon God to take that step, than it does to preach the Gospel.
Every Christian has to partake of what was the essence of the Incarnation, he must bring the thing down into flesh and blood actualities and work it out through the finger tips. We flag when there is no vision, no uplift, but just the common round, the trivial task. The thing that tel s in the long run for God and for men is the steady persevering work in the unseen, and the only way to keep the life uncrushed is to live looking to God. Ask God to keep the eyes of your spirit open to the Risen Christ, and it wil be impossible for drudgery to damp you. Continual y get away from pettiness and paltriness of mind and thought out into the thirteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel.
March 7th.
UNDAUNTED RADIANCE
"Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." Romans 8:37
Paul is speaking of the things that might seem likely to separate or wedge in between the saint and the love of God; but the remarkable thing is that nothing can wedge in between the love of God and the saint. These things can and do come in between the devotional exercises of the soul and God and separate individual life from God; but none of them is able to wedge in between the love of God and the soul of the saint. The bedrock of our Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shal merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in al these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.
The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things - tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in al these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it - "I am exceeding joyful in al our tribulation," says Paul.
Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
March 8th.
THE RELINQUISHED LIFE
"I am crucified with Christ." Galatians 2:20
No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is wil ing to relinquish not sin only, but his whole way of looking at things. To be born from above of the Spirit of God means that we must let go before we lay hold, and in the first stages it is the relinquishing of al pretence. What Our Lord wants us to present to Him is not goodness, nor honesty, nor endeavour, but real solid sin; that is al He can take from us. And what does He give in exchange for our sin?
Real solid righteousness. But we must relinquish al pretence of being any thing, al claim of being worthy of God's consideration.
Then the Spirit of God wil show us what further there is to relinquish. There wil have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase. Am I wil ing to relinquish my hold on al I possess, my hold on my affections, and on everything, and to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?
There is always a sharp painful disil usionment to go through before we do relinquish. When a man real y sees himself as the Lord sees him, it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him, but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ. When he sees himself in the light of the Lord, the shame and the horror and the desperate conviction come home.
If you are up against the question of relinquishing, go through the crisis, relinquish al , and God wil make you fit for al that He requires of you.
March 9th.
THE TIME OF RELAPSE
"Will ye also go away?" John 6:67
A penetrating question. Our Lord's words come home most when He talks in the most simple way. We know Who Jesus is, but in spite of that He says -
"Wil ye also go away?" We have to maintain a venturing attitude toward Him al the time.
"From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him." They went back from walking with Jesus, not into sin, but they relapsed.
Many to-day are spending and being spent in work for Jesus Christ, but they do not walk with Him. The one thing God keeps us to steadily is that we may be one with Jesus Christ. After sanctification the discipline of our spiritual life is along this line. If God gives a clear and emphatic realization to your soul of what He wants, do not try to keep yourself in that relationship by any particular method, but live a natural life of absolute dependence on Jesus Christ.
Never try to live the life with God on any other line than God's line, and that line is absolute devotion to Him. The certainty that I do not know - that is the secret of going with Jesus.
Peter only saw in Jesus Someone to minister salvation to him and to the world. Our Lord wants us to be yoke-fel ows with Him.
v. 70. Jesus answers the great lack in Peter. We cannot answer for others.
March 10th.
HAVE A MESSAGE AND BE ONE
"Preach the word." 2 Timothy 4:2
We are not saved to be "channels only," but to be sons and daughters of God. We are not turned into spiritual mediums, but into spiritual messengers; the message must be part of ourselves. The Son of God was His own message, His words were spirit and life; and as His disciples our lives must be the sacrament of our message. The natural heart wil do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Ghost, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message.
There is a difference between giving a testimony and preaching. A preacher is one who has realized the cal of God and is determined to use his every power to proclaim God's truth. God takes us out of our own ideas for our lives and we are "batter'd to shape and use," as the disciples were after Pentecost. Pentecost did not teach the disciples any thing; it made them the incarnation of what they preached - "Ye shal be witnesses unto Me."
Let God have perfect liberty when you speak. Before God's message can liberate other souls, the liberation must be real in you. Gather your material, and set it alight when you speak.
March 11th.
VISION
"I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." Acts 26:19
If we lose the vision, we alone are responsible, and the way we lose the vision is by spiritual leakage. If we do not run our belief about God into practical issues, it is al up with the vision God has given. The only way to be obedient to the heavenly vision is to give our utmost for God's highest, and this can only be done by continual y and resolutely recal ing the vision. The test is the sixty seconds of every minute, and the sixty minutes of every hour, not our times of prayer and devotional meetings.
"Though it tarry, wait for it." We cannot attain to a vision, we must live in the inspiration of it until it accomplishes itself. We get so practical that we forget the vision. At the beginning we saw it but did not wait for it; we rushed off into practical work, and when the vision was fulfil ed, we did not see it. Waiting for the vision that tarries is the test of our loyalty to God. It is at the peril of our soul's welfare that we get caught up in practical work and miss the fulfilment of the vision.
Watch God's cyclones. The only way God sows His saints is by His whirlwind. Are you going to prove an empty pod? It wil depend on whether or not you are actual y living in the light of what you have seen. Let God fling you out, and do not go until He does. If you select your own spot, you wil prove an empty pod. If God sows you, you wil bring forth fruit.
It is essential to practise the walk of the feet in the light of the vision.
March 12th.
ABANDONMENT
"Then Peter began to say unto Him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee. . . ." Mark 10:28
Our Lord replies in effect, that abandonment is for Himself, and not for what the disciples themselves wil get from it. Beware of an abandonment which has the commercial spirit in it - "I am going to give myself to God because I want to be delivered from sin, because I want to be made holy." Al that is the result of being right with God, but that spirit is not of the essential nature of Christianity. Abandonment is not for anything at al . We have got so commercialized that we only go to God for something from Him, and not for Himself. It is like saying, "No, Lord, I don't want Thee, I want myself; but I want myself clean and fil ed with the Holy Ghost; I want to be put in Thy show room and be able to say - 'This is what God has done for me.'" If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest. That we gain heaven, that we are delivered from sin, that we are made useful to God - these things never enter as considerations into real abandonment, which is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself.
When we come up against the barriers of natural relationship, where is Jesus Christ? Most of us desert Him - "Yes, Lord, I did hear Thy cal ; but my mother is in the road, my wife, my self-interest, and I can go no further." "Then," Jesus says, "you cannot be My disciple."
The test of abandonment is always over the neck of natural devotion. Go over it, and God's own abandonment wil embrace al those you had to hurt in abandoning. Beware of stopping short of abandonment to God. Most of us know abandonment in vision only.
March 13th.
THE ABANDONMENT OF GOD
"God so loved the world that He gave. . ." John 3:16
Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself. My experimental knowledge of salvation wil be along the line of deliverance from sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God's personality, and I am thril ed with something infinitely greater than myself, I am caught up into the abandonment of God.
To say that we are cal ed to preach holiness or sanctification, is to get into a side eddy. We are cal ed to proclaim Jesus Christ. The fact that He saves from sin and makes us holy is part of the effect of the wonderful abandonment of God.
Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you wil never know anything about it until you have realized that John 3:16 means that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us, without any calculation. The consequence of abandonment never enters into our outlook because our life is taken up with Him.
March 14th.
OBEDIENCE
"His servants ye are to whom ye obey." Romans 6:16
The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.
Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you wil find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: "I must have it at once," whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind) - once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bondslave to that thing. There is no release in human power at al but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the dominating power viz., the Lord Jesus Christ - "He hath anointed me . . . to preach deliverance to al captives."
You find this out in the most ridiculously smal ways - "Oh, I can give that habit up when I like." You cannot, you wil find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you yielded to it wil ingly. It is easy to sing - "He wil break every fetter" and at the same time be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself.
Yielding to Jesus wil break every form of slavery in any human life.
March 15th.
THE DISCIPLINE OF DISMAY
"And as they followed, they were afraid." Mark 10:32
At the beginning we were sure we knew al about Jesus Christ, it was a delight to sel al and to fling ourselves out in a hardihood of love; but now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is on in front and He looks strange: "Jesus went before them and they were amazed."
There is an aspect of Jesus that chil s the heart of a disciple to the core and makes the whole spiritual life gasp for breath. This strange Being with His face "set like a flint" and His striding determination, strikes terror into me. He is no longer Counsel or and Comrade, He is taken up with a point of view I know nothing about, and I am amazed at Him. At first I was confident that I understood Him, but now I am not so sure. I begin to realize there is a distance between Jesus Christ and me; I can no longer be familiar with Him. He is ahead of me and He never turns round; I have no idea where He is going, and the goal has become strangely far off.
