Such is the self-surrendered believ er’s attitude towards the Lord, such the Lord’s towards him. Profoundest reverence will look full into the eyes of unalterable sovereignty. But the gaze will be the gaze of friendship, of common understanding, of heart embracing fellow-feeling, none the less. They have fellowship one with another. But now what will be the spiritual effect of such a friendship on the inferior, when the superior is my Lord Jesus Christ, “m y ' King who saved me?” Add to the precious views of my intense connection with Him, as His property, His implement, His vassal, the fact that I am His friend and He mine; that He admits me to His mind and heart, and is pleased to enter the recesses of my own, not only as the autocrat, which He is, but as the infinitely perfect friend. He claims to own me and to use me as despotically as if I were in animate; and let me remember this always, let me remember it now. But He comes down into my soul with the large and loving assurance that He sees in me all the while His con scious friend, and gives Himself to me for mine. He invites me to the ut most confidence I care to place in Him, requests, yes, He requests ad mission into the deepest of my own, I enter His presence-chamber ere I go out to my work in His field, or when I return from it; or I look up in the midst of it, and see standing by me the Lord; and He invites me not only to clasp His feet, but to grasp His hand; nay, in the hour of need, whensoever I will, to lean upon my Master, to lay my head upon His shoulder, to tell Him all. He lets me know that He knows my sorrows. He reminds me that be fore I was, He is; that in my remot est memories, unutterably precious and tender, He was present, and still knows them all; that in my present toil, while in His blessed despotism He allots the task, He also perfectly understands every experience of the worker in it, and can meet them all with His sufficient grace. And in the hour of temptation it is to Him that I can confide literally everything— the least thing, the greatest, the worst. The insight of any other eye into my soul’s recesses soon reaches its limit; the insight of His eye goes through the center of my being, and He reserves it to Himself to deal with that. Am I conscious of failure, then? I come to Him without a mo ment’s delay. I show Him my weak
est point at its weakest moment with out a veil. Wonderful to say, He can make me strongest just there. This is to put Jesus Christ’s friend ship to the proof; this is to find Him closer than a brother. And if He is this to me, I shall care often to be alone with Him; and when alone, to speak with Him. It has been well said: “ If you walk with God, you must talk with God, or you will soon cease to walk with God.” But let not the intercourse be one-sided. Listen as well as pray. “ He that hath an ear, let him hear.” For He on His part will let me look into His heart and His work. He will tell me of His thoughts of me long ago, even before the universe began. He will explain to me the plan and way by which He made me actually His own, His property, His instrument. He will talk freely to me about the yoke, and the cross, and the thorn, as well as bid me bear them; explaining, opening up, with a friend’s generous confidence, what their bearing is upon my eternal fu ture life with Him and for Him. He will lead me out far beyond myself in His gracious expositions of His thoughts. He will talk to me about His Father, and His Father’s cove nant, and His Father’s kingdom; about His Father’s love for the world, and His Father’s love for the Son, and for the Bride of His Son. I work on the while. I submit my self with deepening simplicity to my Master, I am more than ever content to do all day long what I am told. For the bonds of absolute obligation become, in this wonderful reality of a daily intercourse, conductors of the living power of an eternal friend ship. I would not for a moment be free, an independent agent, choosing work and bargaining for pay. I have no rights; I make no conditions. I am a chattel that lives. But, ah! with it and in it, and through it, I am my Master’s friend; the more con sciously and delightfully such, the more I own myself, first and always, His property and His slave. Heavenly master, I am Thine, and Thou art mine. Show me evermore Thy heart of love, the secret of the Lord. Let nothing ever overcast this sacred friendship, to which Thou hast called me. Everywhere, always, keep me abiding in Thy love; according to the working whereby Thou art able to subject all things to Thyself. Amen. (Included in “Christ and Sanctifi cation,” Pickering & Inglis, Ltd., London.) END.
The Divine Friend
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