process of thought, and to look de cisively, at what is the attitude of our will towards Him . t If that is not done, interminable disappointment is a sad probability, where the Holy Spirit keeps conscience awake so as to feel it. Let us note the grand fact that He, this Being who indeed is not our selves, is able to deal with us in our inmost self, and has announced His willingness to do it. Leave alone, for the moment, analysis and theory, however true, and ponder the fact. Is it not good to do so, after such views as we have just been taking? We have held up to our own eyes an ideal of the life of walking with God, with a distinct resolve that it shall not remain for us a mere ideal. It shall be translated and transfigured into the real. It shall be, in some true and solid sense, reflected, before God and before man, in our experience and our life. Never, we know, will this ideal and this real absolutely coincide in our mortal state; if only for this reason, that we shall not be like Him, absolutely, until we see Him as He is. But then, we may be very much more like Him, relatively, than we are. We may reach today such as a new development of like ness that it may be, to what was in us yesterday, a realization of the ideal, though tomorrow may bring in its turn what shall put today to shame. Con I Spring Away From My Own Shadow? Now is not one first result of such views, a deeper and keener sense than ever of self-impotency? Noble and beautiful ideal! Just and conscience waking conditions! But, am I not where I was before, only more aware of it? Are you not asking me to do precisely what is impossible, that I may enter upon a life of peace and spiritual power; to step on to this, rock of strength, this lap of rest, across a gulf I cannot leap, and while I have no wings? Can self deny self? Can the center of my acts and thoughts dislodge itself? Can I will that for which I am unwilling? Can I spring away, once and for all, from my own shadow? In reply to such heart-questionings we will be perfectly practical. The heart, rather than the pure reason, is the questioner in this matter; and words which God has spoken in Scrip ture to the heart will be the best reply. Do you remember the instructive progress of the Psalmist’s thought in Psalm 42:4-6? He is in sore perplex ity, and is athirst for God. At first, he pours out His soul in him, or bet ter, perhaps, upon him; throws and leans his distress upon himself, in A P R I L 1 9 5 4
weary introspection. Then, he rea sons with that soul; conjures it not to fret upon him; entreats it to look up and off to God. Then, better still, he leaves this internal analysis and debate, and speaks direct to God, to his God: “ O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore will I remember thee.” This saint of old shall be our guide. We will remember Him. We will leave the anxious metaphysics of the inner man, and we will go out and up, in some quiet, steady recollections of fact. “ O my God I will remember thee.” These Promises Are For You Think, then, of this great, pervad ing phenomenon of Scripture — its presentation of the Lord Himself—in His infinite but personal Being; out side mine, though the source and base of mine still—as able to deal with me, to work in me, to work through me. Gather together such utterances as these, and believe them as you read them: He “ is able to do exceed ing abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” ; “My grace is suffi cient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” ; “ Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee” ; “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” ; “ He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him” ; He “ is able to make all grace abound toward you” ; He “ is able to keep you from falling” ; “ He is faithful” ; “Not I, but the grace of God . . . with me” ; “ The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ.” Now, mark, these are but some great clusters from the valleys of the Scripture Canaan. But are not these enough to show that “ with God all things,” all things proposed to faith, “ are possible” however impossible in themselves? Looking at these words of the living God, will you not take in, and ever more take in, the divine certainty that He is able, and write it across every practical problem of the first step, and the next step of your walk with God by faith? Yes, clasp this side, the not-self side, of the Scripture promises.* Fear not lest the legitimate action of self, of you, should be unduly eliminated. With the heart that asks the questions we have supposed, that is the last risk, and the least. What you need is to look away to this eternal Person undertaking for you, even before you ask in any detail what He says about
His mode of action.
Has the Glory Departed? Read again, all through your Bible, your infallible Bible, the places that give you this view of Him. Are they trite to you; are they passe'? In hon esty with yourself, have you to own that the glory is departed from them which once, perhaps, shone so richly from them? Believe me, if heart an- swereth to heart, I know the reason. It is because you have ceased to ex pect them to act. It is because you have been willing to put your own conventional gloss upon them. It is because you have assumed words to refer wholly to an indefinite future, and another order of things, which are meant to be words of eternal life for the experience of today. What is meant to be your plank at this mo ment in the deep flood, you have tak en to be only the distant shore to which, practically unaided, you are to swim, half-dro,wned. God Is Able “ O my God, I will remember Thee. Thou art not myself. Thotr knowest me far better than I know myself. I cannot deal with that self; but Thou art able. I cannot manipulate the springs of thought and w ill; but Thou art able. Though I can indeed, with the powers Thou hast given me as man, do certain things in modifica tion of action, yet I cannot, no, I can not, break habits decisively and at their root. But Thou art able. Thou knowest all that besets me; Thou knowest my circumstances; Thou ‘knowest where I dwell’ ; Thou art acquainted with every element in my character, my temperament that re sponds to the besetments of my posi tion. And Thou, infinitely real and truly personal, art able to handle me throughout, in some wonderful way of Thine own, with a divine personal influence, to which it must indeed be blessed to submit. Take Thou me in hand. I am indeed a difficult prob lem, insoluble to myself, but not to Thee. The more baffling the moral difficulty, the more inveterate the habit, the more will be shown Thy skill in dealing with it. Be Thou magnified in my body, and in my spirit, which are Thine. I yield my self to Thee.” “ He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” That is true not for the universe only, nor for the Church only, but for the in dividual, for thee; and not for the eternal future only, but for the pres ent; for the disorder of the soul, of thy soul, today. It is the King who speaks, sitting on the throne. See Him as such, come to Him as such; and expect to find, in the depths of being, and even now, that God is true, and God is able. - END. 13
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker