The preferring of the world before Christ himself. This is the height of covetousness, and the height of this adultery; what, to make the members of Christ the members of an harlot? Why, worldings! those admiring thoughts are Christ's, those pains are Christ's, that love is Christ's, that time, that care, that earnestness is Christ's; they are all Christ's, and will you give that which is Christ's unto the world? And prefer the world before Christ with his own? What, live as professed prostitutes, that prefer every one before their husbands? Christ is never precious in man's apprehension, so long as the world seems glorious to him. As we begin to relish sweetness in Christ, so the world begins to be bitter to us. The more sweetness we taste in the one, the more bitterness we taste in the other.
I was greatly impressed by something a great national leader wrote in his autobiography: "I want nothing for myself; I want everything for my country." If a man can be willing that his country should have everything and he himself nothing, cannot we say to our God: "Lord, I want nothing for myself; I want all for Thee. I will what Thou willest, and I want to have nothing outside Thy will." Not until we take the place of a servant can He take His place as Lord. He is not calling us to devote ourselves to His cause: He is asking us to yield ourselves unconditionally to His will. Are you prepared for that?
I have to learn to persevere in the race He has set before me, drawing my strength only from Him, and not relying at all on what I may consider any natural abilities I may have. I have to let God take from me even that strength which I thought I had in order that He may more fully reveal His own strength: in order that He may continue in me the work of conforming me to the image of His Son. Paul said: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). This death-life, as seen in the imagery of the stripping of the branch to create the arrow, may appear to be full of sacrifices, and thus be a costly discipline. Yet as our Lord Himself told us, there is no other way to the fullness of the abundant life that He would pour into us: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly" (John 10:10), and again: "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain" (John 12:24). I long to be kept by God in an attitude of willing surrender so that He can go on to perfect that which concerns me; so that He can go on stripping and whittling and sandpapering until He is content with the new arrow He is creating. Crucifixion, the death-to-self life, must surely be seen by us all as costly, but the abundant life that He wishes to bestow on each can only be seen as unutterable privilege. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17).
See what a work the Lord foreshadowed when He said those simple words, “I am going there to prepare a place for you.” What sort of a place are you aiming at? Yes, you would rather be a doorkeeper there than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. But this is not now the question. Would you prefer to be a doorkeeper to being an ambassador? Would you prefer to serve self, and pleasure, and wealth on earth, and be of little or no use hereafter; or will you choose to live for Christ heart and soul, forgetting things past and pressing on toward the mark, keen and strong. Which? Christ is preparing your place. He is, to that end, watching your course on earth. The sons of Zebedee demanded to sit on the right and left of the King Himself. Do not follow the other disciples in their anger at this request. It is well to aim high. It is contemptible to seek merely to “get saved.” But remember our Lord’s reply to the disciples, “Can ye drink of My cup, and be baptized with My baptism?” Ah, that is it! We are carving out our own destiny every moment. The Judgment Seat of Christ will settle all. There will be no respect of persons there. But the faithful servant will take a higher place and portion, and the slothful and worldly will be saved, that is all.
God demands that we present ourselves—together with our families, business and wealth—wholly to Him. It seems, however, that every Christian tries to retain something for himself. Let us understand that although under the Old Covenant the people had to offer one-tenth to God, the New Covenant offering is ten-tenths. Many Christians are fearful lest God trouble them. Once a believer who was afraid of offering himself to the Lord said, "If I offer myself to God, and He makes me suffer, what can I do?" To which I replied quit seriously: "Who do you think God is? Suppose a child who used to disobey his parents said to them that hereafter he will obey them. Do you think his parents will deliberately require him to do what he cannot do so as to make him suffer? If so, they are not parents, but judges. Being parents, they doubtless will be especially merciful to their child. How, then, can you suggest that God would purposely cause you to suffer? Do you really think He would intentionally destroy you? You forget that He is your Father." Whoever is afraid to lay all (including people, things, and affairs) before God in consecration cannot be an overcomer... Consecration makes life powerful as well as joyful. He who is unwilling to offer to God is powerless, joyless, and sinful.
A heart possessed of Christ is fortified against the most seductive allurements of the world... He being the sole object of their hearts, they are in the condition of soul to enter into, and enjoy, His beauties. They will detect His presence, the blessed fragrance of His words and His acts, where others will observe nothing. They live in His presence; they are wholly for Him; and hence it is the delight of Christ to disclose Himself to them in such attractive ways as to increase and elicit their affections towards Himself. It follows from what has been said that the state of our souls may be discerned by the effect produced upon us by the name of Jesus. If our hearts are careless and irresponsive when He is the subject of conversation or presentation, we cannot be in communion with the heart of God. Why even the name of a beloved object on earth will produce pleasurable emotions. How much more should the name of Christ, the object of God's heart — and also of ours if we know Him — awaken within us holy feelings of delight, which can only be expressed in praise and adoration!
"let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12:1b) Do you as a Christian really believe in Christ? Can you trust yourself absolutely and entirely into His hand? Dare you trust Him? Dare you trust in His promises? Or is there a streak of doubt and unbelief within you which insists upon arguing, “If I give up the world what will I have left? How can I go on if I give up to world?” Can you not believe that the Lord has something far better for you? Can you not believe He is able to deliver you from all your sin? Can you not put your trust in Him? If we truly desire to run the race we must lay aside the sin of unbelief and cast ourselves upon the Lord and trust Him. To lay aside sin, and especially the sin of unbelief, constitutes the first requirement which must be fulfilled if we would run after God in response to His love. But secondly, we must lay aside every weight which would heavily weigh us down. Weight may not necessarily be sin. Weight may be something legitimate, lawful, even respectable. Suppose I clothe myself with, among other things, a shirt, a tie, a coat, a heavy pair of shoes. This is respectable, this is quite legitimate, this is perfectly appropriate—if I am not running a race. But if I am running a race, then all these articles are quite unnecessary. Not only unnecessary, but they all become a burden to me! They weigh me down. They hinder me from running well. I have to strip myself to the uttermost, to the least necessaries, to the barest essentials. Then, I am free to run the race. With some people it may be sin, with so many others it is heavy weights. Oh, the cares of this life; the ease, the comfort, the luxury of it all. The many good things in this life. All which goes to make up the so-called affluent way of life. These elements may not be bad; they may in fact be very good and very respectful. But my dear brothers and sisters, if we desire them to such an extent that we must have them, if we desire them to such a degree that we cannot exist without them, to such a degree that they become a weight and a load upon us, then they hinder us from running fast; nay, they may hinder us from running at all! Our souls are not able to rise and ascend.
To be a living sacrifice will involve all my time. God wants me to live every minute for Him in accordance with His will and purpose, sixty minutes of every hour, twenty-four hours of every day, being available to Him. No time can be considered as my own, or as “off-duty” or “free”. I cannot barter with God about how much time I can give to serve Him. Whatever I am doing, be it a routine salaried job, or housework at home, be it holiday time and free, or after-work Christian youth activities, all should be undertaken for Him, to reveal His indwelling presence to those around me. To be a living sacrifice will involve all my possessions. Everything that I have is in trust, be it financial or material. All should be available to God for the furtherance of His Kingdom. My money is His… I must look to Him for guidance in its use, with no sense that a certain percentage is my own by right of labor. I relinquish that right to Him. He has the right to direct the spending of each penny. To be a living sacrifice will involve all of myself. My will and my emotions, my health and vitality, my thinking and activities, all are to be available to God, to be employed as He chooses, to reveal Himself to others. Should He see that someone would be helped to know Him through my being ill, I accept ill health and weakness. I have no right to demand what we call good health… All rights are His — to direct my living so that He can most clearly reveal Himself through me. I gladly accept His best will for my life… I need to be so utterly God’s that He can use me or hide me, as He chooses, as an arrow in His hand or in His quiver. I will ask no questions: I relinquish all rights to Him, who desires my supreme good. He knows best.
O turn your thoughts from off all earthly vanities, and bend your souls to study Christ. Habituate yourselves to such contemplations... and let not those thoughts be seldom or cursory, but settle upon them, dwell there, bathe your souls in those delights, drench your affections in those rivers of pleasures, or rather in the sea of consolation. O tie your souls in heavenly galleries, have your eyes continually set on Christ! Say not, "You are unable to do thus, this must be God's work only, and therefore all our exhortations are in vain..." Though God be the chief disposer of your hearts, yet next under him you have the greatest command of them yourselves. Though "without Christ ye can do nothing;" yet under him you may do much: or else it will be undone, and you undone through your neglect. If your souls were sound and right, they would perceive incomparably more delight and sweetness, in knowing, thinking, believing, loving and rejoicing in Jesus Christ, than the soundest stomach finds in his food, or the strongest senses in the enjoyments of their objects. Oh it is our sloth, our security, our carnal mind, which is enmity to God and Christ, that keeps us off. Be exhorted! Oh be exhorted in the fear of God.
The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done.
This absolute surrender to God will wonderfully bless us... But do remember, there must be absolute surrender. At every tea-table you see it. Why is tea poured into that cup? Because it is empty, and given up for the tea. But put ink, or vinegar, or wine into it, and will they pour the tea into the vessel? And can God fill you, can God bless you, if you are not absolutely surrendered to Him? He cannot. Let us believe God has wonderful blessings for us, if we will but stand up for God, and say, be it with a trembling will, yet with a believing heart: "O God, I accept thy demands. I am thine and all that I have..."
How many of us know that, because Christ is risen, we are therefore alive “unto God” and not unto ourselves? How many of us dare not use our time or money or talents as we would, because we realize they are the Lord’s not ours? How many of us have such a strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not squander a shilling of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental or physical powers?
If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He will say: 'This must go.' Are you willing?
The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him.
I have a pen in my pocket, and that pen is absolutely surrendered to the one work of writing. That pen must be absolutely surrendered to my hand if I am to write properly with it. If another holds it partly, I cannot write properly.... And now, do you expect that in your immortal being, in the divine nature that you have received by regeneration, God can work His work, every day and every hour, unless you are entirely given up to Him? God cannot. The temple of Solomon was absolutely surrendered to God when it was dedicated to Him. And every one of us is a temple of God, in which God will dwell and work mightily on one condition-absolute surrender to Him.
Every man is as holy as he really wants to be. But the want must be all-compelling... Set aside time to pray and search the Scriptures; surrender wholly to the will of God. You will be surprised and delighted with the results.
God, I saw, demanded my undivided attention. Everything else must take a second place. Friends and loved ones, home, money, work, all—even though legitimate—must give way to Christ! Day and night my undivided attention must be given to Him. God first! Such must be my attitude toward Him. Only then would He be able to bless and use me.
Looking unto Jesus, to receive from Him the task and the cross for each day, with the grace which is sufficient to carry the cross and to accomplish the task; the grace that enables us to be patient with His patience, active with His activity, loving with His love; never asking 'What am I able for?' but rather: 'What is He not able for?' and waiting for His strength which is made perfect in our weakness
My giving of myself to the Lord must be an initial fundamental act. Then day by day I must go on giving to Him, not finding fault with His use of me, but accepting with praise even what the flesh finds hard. That way lies true enrichment.
In our desire after God, let us keep always in mind that God also has a desire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularly toward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision to exalt Him over all. Such as these are precious to God above all treasures of earth or sea. In them God finds a theater where He can display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. With them God can walk unhindered, toward them He can act like the God He is.
To get His best we must give our best. To become men and women after His Own heart, we must let Him have our undivided attention. To win, we must surrender. To live, we must die. To receive, we must give! Oh, the joy of such a life! There is nothing like it. All the success in the world cannot compensate for it. Friends can never mean so much. Even loved ones disappoint. Money brings its burdens, and fame its bitterness. But He satisfies!