8. How to Enter In
CHAPTER 8
How to Enter In
But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? (John 14:22)
But how does He thus manifest Himself as He does not unto the world? First, He Himself brings us into this state. He does not leave us to climb up to it alone. He does not build a palace yonder and say, “If you can reach it, it will be a blessed place,” but He brings us right up to the palace.
John Bunyan, when God came to him with conviction of sin, saw in vision a house of beauty and of blessing where holy men and women were singing together in the very light of the Lord. But he was outside and could not get within. It seemed that a barrier of rocks arose between them and him. He saw how happy those people were, and how bright the scene, and how real the joy. But he was out in the dark and cold. And that is the way it seems to some. They say: “It is beautiful to live a life like that where it is constant rest and victory and where our troubles do not drown us; where the great whirlpool of sin does not draw us in, and we have Christ to bless us and to make us a blessing to others, but it is not possible for us to get there.”
I remember a meeting where a good man got up and told the people what Christ would do for them if they would only let Him in to do it. “But,” he said, “you must be prepared for it. You must get cleansed first or Christ will not come.” I saw those countenances go down and the people seemed to be asking by their looks: “Oh, dear, how shall we get cleansed?” And I longed to say, “Beloved, the cleansing is just what Christ Himself waits to give you.”
Christ Our Holiness
To get a holiness of our own, and then have Christ reward us for it, is not His teaching. Christ Himself is our holiness; He will bring His own holiness and come and dwell in our hearts forever.
People sometimes used to fix up the shanties on the vacant lots in the upper part of New York City where many poor people lived. The wash woman would spend a few dollars to clean up her shanty and whitewash its walls and would feel that she had made it look respectable. But when a millionaire purchased that lot, he did not fix up that old shanty, but tore it down and built a mansion in its place.
It is not fixing up the house that we need. Give Christ the vacant lot and He will excavate below the old life and build a worthier house where He will live forever. Christ must be the preparation for the blessing as well as the blessing. It is as when a great Assyrian king used to set out on a march. He did not command the people to make a road, but he sent on his own men arid they cut down the trees and filled the broken places and leveled the mountains. So Christ will work in us if we let Him be the coming King and the Author and Finisher of our faith.
Our Death to Self
A lady once told me that Christ had said to her, “I will be thy death, and I will then be thy life.” Do not try to be your death. Take Christ for the crucifixion. Christ will completely undertake and finish the work of uprooting, casting away and crucifying. One does not need to stand in the dissecting room working over his spiritual corpse, or trembling with the knife of the suicide trying to stab himself to death. Be done with all that torture. Trust Him to be the power to slay self. Hand self over to Christ and say, “Here is the culprit, Lord; I deliver him over to You. I cannot slay him but I want him killed. I want You to still these throbbing pulses of passion and let peace come instead. I cannot do it. But I give You the right to slay me in Your own way, and here once and forevermore I yield myself to You.”
Our Life and Purity
Christ will not only be the death of self and the power to put old self aside by His Spirit and grace, but He will be in us the new life of purity and power. He will cleanse us and let us share His life. And there will be such a sense of its being a life that does not belong to you. When one receives Christ there is no pride because of one’s own goodness; but we feel like lying in the dust and saying, “I am nothing but the chief of sinners.” But at the same time, He is conscious that a blessed stream of purity is flowing through every avenue of His being. When temptation comes He meets it by the blessed supply of His Spirit, and one is lifted above it; the positive destroys the negative; the heavenly repels the earthly and the evil.
It as when, on a sultry summer day, suddenly the refreshing showers fall and in a few moments everything is cleansed and purified. The grass is fresh and green. The flowers lift up their heads with beauty and brightness. The air is full of life and the sweet fragrance of nature fills the senses. So it is when the Spirit of Christ comes to refresh the weary, sinful heart. His presence will be like those showers, dropping upon the spirit and cleansing it from the very dust of the defiling earth, or like the pebble by the stream, kept clean in its ceaseless flow.
Our Peace
Again, He is not only our death and our life but He becomes our peace. You read much of this in the Gospels. “My peace I give you…. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). Tranquility is one of the chief features of this life of Christ within. The natural turbulence and irritation will be stilled. One shall be self-poised or, rather, Christ-poised, and there will be a sense of calm, strength and rest. Instead of storming through life the believer will be divinely quiet. Down in the depths of life there shall be a consciousness of “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). Christ comes into the inner chambers of the heart and, although there may be turbulence and tribulation outside, whispers, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Our Joy
This indwelling Christ is more than peace—He is also joy. “That my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (15:11). Zephaniah had laid hold of this thought, “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you; he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). Sometimes He will be silent in His love. He will sometimes hold the tides of joy so calm and still that one will be afraid to stir for fear of breaking the spell. And then at other times the joy will sweep through all the channels of His being. Alternately He will rest and then break out in transports of joy.
The peace is abiding; the joy is occasional. When there is need to rise above some earthly trial, then the fountains overflow. So He came to Paul and Silas when their bones were aching and they were sore from the stripes of the inner prison. They could not keep it back. They sang for joy. It came when the people of Antioch had chased them out of the city and “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” It came to the martyrs when they were roasting at slow fires and they turned to their persecutors and said, “We do not feel the flames, the joy is so great; it fills our being and quenches the pain.” It was the Spirit of Him who, on the eve of the cross, turned from His own troubles, began to comfort them and said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
Christ in us will be our faith. We will be able to say, “The life I live in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God.” When you have this faith it will be second nature to believe God. You will be conscious of a supernatural faith, and you will not be trying to have faith but simply responding to His call, “Have the faith of God.”
Our Love
Again the love of God will be shed abroad in your hearts; not the love of your natural heart but the love of God. If Christ is in you, you will be conscious of a divine love for Christ and know that it is not your love but His. And you will have new affections and friendships to all men, loving in and for Him only.
Our Wisdom
If we have this indwelling Christ, He will be our wisdom. He will in some way touch our very thoughts. He will give us new conceptions of truth. You will have His intuitions about the things you ought or ought not to do, yet all in perfect harmony with our nature, so blended with the faculties He has given us that the thoughts and impulses will seem to be our own.
Our Power
He will be the strength of God in you. Paul said, “…To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). So it will not be our doing but Christ enabling us. Christ giving us His power to work for others and for the effectual building up of His kingdom. So that, while we are a weak woman or an imperfectly educated man, we will be filled with the consciousness, “I am speaking in the strength of God,” and we will know that the Word of God shall not return to Him void.
He is blessed to work and speak and pray in the power of Christ. And it is mockery and worse than vain to attempt it without. Christ will be our power: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me …” (Matthew 28:18b), “… surely I am with you always…” (Matthew 28:20b).
Our Prayer
Christ in us will be our prayer life. He will intercede within us. And there will be sometimes the groans and tears of His own Gethsemane and again the effectual prayer that claims all things in His name.
Our Praise
He will be our praise as well as our prayer. He will come to the heart after it has presented its petition and touch it with the voice of thanksgiving, enabling us to bless God for the answer that is coming.
Our Health
If Christ is in our heart He will be our physical strength and life. He will inspire our vital functions with energy and make us know that the life also of Jesus is being manifested in our mortal body.
Our Patience
When Christ is in us He is our patience. One part of Christ’s life was suffering; so a large part of ours will be suffering with Him. That cross will also rest upon the Mount Calvary of the believer’s life and he will gladly share it with Him—not suffering needlessly, not suffering to please the enemy. It is suffering in order that a cup of cold water might be given to another or to help carry a burden or bear them through places where they would sink. This is helping Christ bear His heavy load for the suffering hearts of the world. When suffering comes as it came to Him, from opposing men and devils, then He will enable us to become more than conquerors.
How to Enter In
When I was in Scotland I went to visit an old cemetery in the city of Sterling and as I gazed upon one gray monument, looking back through the mist of years, it brought to my mind the story of the Covenanters. It was the monument of Margaret Wilson. It told how that dear young saint, a girl in her teens, held so to her love of Jesus that the pleadings of father and mother and friends kept her not back from death. “Only one little word, Margaret, one little word and your life will be spared,” they said. “I canna speak the word that shall dishonor Jesus,” she replied. “Remember your father’s grief,” he begged the night before she died. She stroked his gray hairs and said, “I canna speak the words you bid me speak.”
Next morning they took her out—those rude, hard men—and tied her to the stake and put it in the sea. And they tied to another a gray-haired old saint, and they put her a little farther out in the wild sea so that Margaret Wilson could first see her die. And they said, “Margaret Wilson, don’t you see her agony? Won’t you now recant?” And she said, “No, I do not see her; I only see Jesus in His suffering servant wrestling there.” And a little later the chariot of the Lord was waiting to bear her conquering spirit home.
That is our watchword, “Christ in one of His members suffering there.” “Not I, but Christ.” Thus we can overcome; thus we can live; thus we can suffer. Believers can be “more than conquerors through him” (Romans 8:37).
Our Will
If Christ be thus in us He will be in the very center of our being—our will. This is the helm of character. But Christ will take the will and bend it until it shall be no longer stubborn. He will make it yield to His will and choose what He chooses. He will make it delightfully spontaneous. When I was a lad I made my own sled runners, and they would always break. But one day a carpenter showed me a better way to make runners. He put it in the steam boiler and then it would bend easily.
Christ does not want to break our will, but put it in the fire of His love and work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. And then He will take it and make it strong. When the sled runner was bent, the carpenter showed me how to make it so firm that it would not spring back again. So Christ can make our will firm.