WITH YOU Lo, I am with you! With you as I promised! What though ye see Me not, nor fee! Me near? Lo, I am with you! rest your heart upon it! Lo, I am with you! Always! Now! And here! Lo, I am with you, in the darkest valley! Lo, I am with you, in life's brightest hour! Lo, I am with you, in life's deepest sorrow! With you as well in summer's fairest bower! Lo, I am with you. Now! Henceforth! Forever! Ye, who are Mine, by precious blood, My own; Lo, I am with you, — have this for your comfort: No hour can be when thou art quite alone. — J. Danson Smith. OTHERS MAY - YOU CANNOT By G . D. Watson I F God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do. Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent. Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their success, of their waitings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise your self and all your good works. Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may hdve a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in obscurity, because He wants you to pro duce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be great, but keep you small. He may let others do a work for Him and get the credit of it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He may let others get the. credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infi nite Sovereign, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own. He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you abso lutely sell yourself to be His love slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle. Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others. Now when you are so possessed with the living God that you are in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, per sonal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.
There is a reminder of this very thing in the account of the feast at Cana. We read that when the water was turned into wine, the governor of the feast did not understand it,1BUT THE SERVANTS WHICH DREW THE WATER KNEW. How often have God’s workings been a mystery to the mighty and noble, the dignitaries and important folks, while some humble souls, who took Jesus at His Word and filled their waterpots with water, understood. Do not our revivals start that way? It is not governors and mighty men who recover the Pentecost wine for the church; it is the servants who draw the water—maybe in a back-street church. Anyway, we must recover the wine. It takes drunk men to make a dent on this world. The early church was irresistible. Nowadays someone has described the average church service as “ a mild-mannered man standing before a group of mild- mannered people exhorting everybody to be more mild-man nered.” But this age will never be moved by mildly interested people sipping hot chocolate in a basement during Go to Church Week. If Adolf Hitler, drunk with Nazism, could poison one gen eration in Germany and wreck the world, certainly one gen eration of American youth, filled with the Spirit and fools for Christ’s sake, could make this world sit up and take notice, asking first, “What meaneth this?” and then, “What shall we do?” We lack that which stirs the soul and warms the heart. Say what you will about emotion, man is so constituted that if he cannot get a lift the right way, he will get it the wrong way, for life is hard and men must have some way of rising above it. So they set out to have a good time. They pour several drinks down their esophagus, release their inhibitions and make fools of themselves. When it is over they have escaped life only temporarily and their troubles return with a hangover added. But God says, “ Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” Do not get drunk that way. There is a heavenly stimulant that really works. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, be filled with the Spirit, and you will not escape the world, you will overcome it! It will not lift you out of this world but it will enable you live above this world though Satan’s darts at you are hurled. And there is no hangover! “ The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.” There is no morning-after, dark-brown taste to the joy of the Lord! The children of this world are wiser than the children of light. All kinds of isms are put over by enthusiasts willing to abandon themselves to their cause. We see some of them standing on street corners in all kinds of weather handing out their propaganda while comfortable Christians sit with folded hands half asleep and wonder why these sects grow so amazingly. Yet the greatest power in all existence wants to sweep through us and our churches. There is no use in grum bling about these isms. The best antidote for the false is a double dose of the true. If they are filled with the wrong spirit, we certainly are not filled with the right Spirit! This world is not moved by theological brass hats but by fools for Christ’s sake, beside themselves, drunk on new wine. There was One at Cana who could supply the lack. Jesus’ mother said, “ Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” There is One who can meet our lack today. He was first a guest at Cana but when this dilemma arose He became the host. Too often He is just a guest in our hearts and churches, limited to a room or two at that. Let Him take over, obey Him and whatsoever He says, do it. He bade them fill the waterpots with water. That must have looked very foolish when what they needed was wine, not water. If the miracle had not hap pened, how ridiculous the whole business would have been! God often bids His servants do things that do not make sense to the world. And He makes fools of us temporarily to vindi cate us eternally. The Isaraelites marching around Jericho, Gideon and his three hundred, David with his sling and stones going to meet Goliath—what fools if it hadn’t worked. But it worked and it always works when God commands and we obey. We have no wine. But let us make Christ the host and do as He commands. And the last wine will be better than the first.
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