"You know all things, You know that I love
you."
John 21:17
The sweetest and most inspiring thought
that a Christian can hold in his heart as he faces life's responsibilities is
that God knows the sincerity of his heart devotions. To be able to look up into
the face of God and confess amid all the fluctuating experiences of one's life,
"You know that I love you,"
is to know a refuge and a place of rest for every glad and every troubled hour
in life. It is a precious thing to remember in hours of vigorous and prosperous
spiritual life, that God knows the sincerity of our love for Him; for do we not
feel at such times a sense of utter, inability to express the depth of love
that abides in our hearts for Him.
But
particularly precious is this, assurance that He knows all things concerning
our affection for Him, when we have wretchedly failed to demonstrate that
degree of love by some sad mistake in word or act. It is then that this refuge
seems most wonderfully sweet. At times when we seem lifted up into some fresh
vision of the greatness of God's love towards us, and we try with our feeble
words to express our joy and gratitude, how often we have found "this poor lisping, stammering
tongue" just falling back on these words coined by such a heart long
ago, "You know all things, you know
that I love you." But when we have fallen in some crisis hour, and
failed to attain a victory we had so confidently expected to have to our
credit, and after trying to express some self justifications, and to make some
apologies for our failure, being painfully humiliated because we stumbled so,
ah then, how our heart has fled to this refuge as its final source of comfort: "You know I love you."
It
is the blessed inheritance of every loving Christian heart to claim this
refuge; and to realize that in it he possesses this last and this greatest
haven of love, this final court of appeal, God's knowledge of the sincerity of
our hearts. What a boon it is! As we attempt to live out our consecrated lives
today, endeavoring to express our devotion to God as best we can, most of us
encounter plenty of that foretold opposition promised all faithful believers.
How often we would be crushed under it if we did not remember that God knows
all about us.
Many elements enter into the experiences of God's people in days like
these. All about us we may see the fulfillments of prophecy pointing out these
last days as a time of special trial for the saints of God. From all three quarters, the world,
the flesh, and the devil, influences are emanating which might well discourage
even the most valiant heart, and would do so if it did not find faith
strengthened by the assurance that God knows, and loves, and cares. But among
the peculiar and particularly severe testings of this
present hour, there is a prevailing sentiment, a skepticism
or doubting of the personal sincerity of others. We live in a world in which distrust,
and the spirit of competition is rife, and these very influences all around us,
seemingly in the very air, are sure to "try
all them that dwell on the face of the earth," including the professed
people of God. The spirit in the world is today a spirit of
alertness, ready at an instant to spring into life and ripen rapidly
into suspicion. To be on guard against others becomes in time so fixed a habit
that the love which "thinks no
evil," and which "rejoices
not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth," ceases to be manifested
in circles where above all others it should abound. Under such circumstances
what a refuge tried and afflicted hearts may find in the confidence that they
can come into the presence of Him who knows all things, and say to Him,
"You know that I love you."
In
the effort to live our lives in the midst of present conditions, to bear
unmoved the unfavorable judgments, which in some measure perhaps we have
brought upon ourselves, we meet the difficulty of trying to make our true self
known to others. There are many difficulties encountered in having our motives
properly interpreted. Motives we have examined as in the presence of God, may seem questionable in the eyes of others because
they judge by outward appearances. Many times we know they would find motives
better than they thought they would, if they only understood. There are many
tangled threads in every life, inevitably so because all are
so imperfect. Mending and patchwork combined would describe the kind of showing
most of us make;
and keenly conscious
of how very
unprofitable we are, and knowing that it is only through His abounding mercy
that we are permitted to go on seeking to prove our love to Him, we plead,
"Dear Lord, take up my tangled
threads,
Where I have wrought in vain,
That by the skill of Thy dear hands
Some beauty may remain.
"Take
all the failures, each mistake
Of our poor
human ways,
Then, Savior, for Thine own dear sake,
Make them
show forth Thy praise."
And so it happens that we as often
misrepresent ourselves as others misrepresent us. Our own missteps, our own blemishes,
help to make our lives an enigma to others. The realization of this fact may at
times bring us a bitterness of spirit, or discouragement, because we have so
wanted to live out in daily life the impress of the Spirit's in-working of the
character of Christ. The sting of this bitter disappointment is in the
knowledge we have of ourselves, that we are discrediting the deeper self which,
beneath these failures and seeming inconsistencies, is after all our true self.
We know that when, through all the faults and deficiencies we have to confess,
Christ's pointed question, "Lovest thou Me more than these?" comes to us and
seems to search our heart to its depths, there is that confidence within which
answers back, "You know that I love
you."
How
blessed to realize in such an hour that we still have left this last and
greatest refuge of love, this assurance of His knowledge of our sincerity.
Whatever our own poor faulty words and ways may seem to say to others, and
whatever the verdict of others may be concerning us, and whatever our own memory
may hold up before us of mistake and failure, we can still look up to Christ
and say, "You know all things, you
know that I love you." And who, that really appreciates this refuge
for himself, can fail to be inspired with the determination to let such love
mellow, purify, strengthen, and fill his heart to overflowing with a glad
conformity to the wish and prayer of Jesus that we should love and sympathize
with one another even as He has continued to love and fully sympathize with as,
loving us in spite of all our lamented imperfections.
(To be Continued).
J. J.
Blackburn