Greater Things than These
Part 3
The
believing heart is a warm heart. As someone has well said in verse:
"A warmth within the
heart would melt
The freezing reason's colder part;
And like a man
in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered, 'I have
felt!'"
A life that would be like Christ's must be
filled with love as His was. The great principles illustrated in the life of
Jesus, and because of which He worked the works of God, must govern our lives
also. If we would be workmen needing not to be ashamed, we too must learn first
of all to be like Him in an absolute renunciation of the self-life and all self-aims.
We must be willing to give up "the
love of life for the sake of the life of love." Jesus emphasized that
fellowship with the Father molded and ruled all His words and actions the
Father working through Him. This being true of Him, how very important it is
then that we be clean and ready channels through which Christ may work His
works through us Christ, the Word of God, must fill and control our thoughts and words and doings.
"If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ; His Son, cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). How blessedly true! And it will be true whenever Christ has been formed within our hearts. It will then be Christ for our understanding, His authority for the will, His love for the heart, His certainty for our hope, Christ for the fruition of all our desires. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passiveness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but the contact of our whole nature, with its sole adequate object our Lord Jesus Christ.
Such intercourse, brethren, lies at the
foundation of all work for God. It is the condition of all our power. It is the
measure of all our successes. Without it, we may seem to realize the externals
of prosperity; but it will all be an illusion. With it we may perchance seem to
spend our strength for naught; but heaven will have its surprises; and those
who have toiled, nor left their hold of their Lord in all their work, will have
it to say at last with wonder, as they see the results of their poor efforts: 'Who hath begotten me these?'
Consider in few words the manifold ways in
which the indispensable prerequisite of all works for the Lord may be shown to
be communion with Christ: "The heavenward look is
the renewal of our own vision of the calm verities in which we trust, the
recourse for ourselves to the realities which we desire that others should see.
And what is equal in persuasive power to the simple utterance of your own
intense conviction? He only will infuse his own religion into other minds whose religion is not a set of hard dogmas, but is fused
by the heat of personal experience into a river of living fire. It will flow
then, not otherwise. The only claim, which the hearts of men will listen to in
those who would win them to spiritual beliefs, is that ancient one: 'That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon,
declare we unto you.' Mightier than all arguments, than all proofs of
the truth of the Christian religion and penetrating into a sphere deeper than
that of the understanding, is the simple proclamation, We have found the Messiah.' If we would give sight to the blind,
we must ourselves be gazing into heaven. Only when we testify of that which we
have seen shall we win any to gaze with us till they too behold and know themselves
set free.
The heavenward look draws new strength from the source of all our might. In our work, dear brethren, contemplating as it ought to do exclusively spiritual results, what we do depends largely on what we are, and what we are depends on what we receive, and what we receive depends on the depth and constancy of our communion with God. We are but channels through which this might is poured; and if we choke the bed with turbid masses of drift and heavy rocks of earthly thoughts, how shall the full tide flow through us for the healing of the salt and barren places. Let us see to it that by fellowship with Christ we keep the passage clear, and become recipients of the inspiration which shall thrill our otherwise silent spirits into the blast of loud alarm and the ringing proclamation of the true King." Verily we must drink of the water Christ gives, if we would send forth streams of living water to others; and as the vessel used of the Lord must be a clean pure vessel, therefore, we must
Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;
Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word,
Make friends of Gods children, help those who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.
Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone;
By looking to Jesus, like Him you will be;
Your friends in your conduct His likeness shall see.
J. J. Blackburn