CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 16
Practical Results in the Daily Walk and Conversation
If all that has been written in the foregoing chapters on the life hid with Christ be true, its results in the practical daily walk and conversation ought to be very marked, and the people who have entered into the enjoyment of it ought to be, in very truth, a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
My son, now with God, once wrote to a friend something to this effect: that we are God’s witnesses necessarily, because the world will not read the Bible, but they will read our lives; and that upon the report these give will very much depend their belief in the divine nature of the religion we possess. If, therefore, our faith is to make any headway in the present time, it must be proved to be more than a theory; and we must present to the investigation of the critical minds of our age the realities of lives transformed by the mighty power of God, “working in them all the good pleasure of His will.”
I desire, therefore, to speak very solemnly for what I conceive to be the necessary fruit of a life of faith such as I have been describing and to press home to the hearts of every one of my readers their personal responsibility to “walk worthy of the high calling” with which they have been called.
The standard of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that the least degree of real devotedness of life and walk is looked upon with surprise and often even with disapproval by a large portion of the Church. And for the most part, the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ are satisfied with a life so conformed to the world and so like it in almost every respect that to a casual observer, no difference is discernible.
We who have heard the call of our God to a life of entire consecration and perfect trust must do differently. We must come out from the world and be separate. We must set our affections on heavenly things, not on earthly ones, and we must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, surrendering everything that would interfere with this. We must walk through the world as Christ walked. We must have the mind that was in Him. As pilgrims and strangers, we must abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul. As good soldiers of Jesus Christ, we must disentangle ourselves inwardly from the affairs of this life that we may please Him who has chosen us to be soldiers. We must abstain from all appearance of evil. We must be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven us. We must not resent injuries or unkindness but must return good for evil and turn the other cheek to the hand that smites us. We must take always the lowest place among our fellowmen and seek not our own honor, but the honor of others. We must be gentle and meek and yielding, not standing up for our own rights, but for the rights of others. We must do everything, not for our own glory, but for the glory of God. And, to sum it all up, since He who has called us is holy, so we must be holy in all manner of conversation.
Some Christians seem to think that all the requirements of a holy life are met when there is very active and successful Christian work. Because they do so much for the Lord in public, they feel a liberty to be cross and ugly and un-Christlike in private. We must be just as Christlike to our servants as we are to our minister. In daily home life, indeed, that practical piety can best show itself, and we may well question any “professions” that fail under this test of daily life.
A cross Christian or an anxious Christian; a discouraged, gloomy Christian; a doubting Christian; a complaining Christian; an exacting Christian, a selfish Christian; a cruel, hard-hearted Christian; a self-indulgent Christian; a Christian with a sharp tongue or bitter spirit—all these may be very earnest in their work and may have honorable places in the church, but they are not Christlike Christians. The life hid with Christ in God is a hidden life, as to its source, but it must not be hidden as to its practical results. We must prove that we “possess” that which we “profess.” We must really and absolutely turn our backs on everything that is contrary to the perfect will of God. It means that we are to be a “peculiar people,” not only in the eyes of God, but in the eyes of the world around us; and that wherever we go, it will be known from our habits, our tempers, our conversation, and our pursuits that we are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and are not of the world, even as He was not of the world. We must no longer look upon our money as our own, but as belonging to the Lord, to be used in His service. We must not feel at liberty to use our energies exclusively in the pursuit of worldly means but must recognize that, if we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all needful things shall be added unto us. Our days will have to be spent, not in serving ourselves, but in serving the Lord, and we shall find ourselves called upon to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Whatever we do will be done “not with eyeservice, as menpleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.”
Into all this we shall undoubtedly be led by the Spirit of God if we give ourselves up to His guidance. I have noticed that wherever there has been a faithful following of the Lord in a consecrated soul, several things have, sooner or later, inevitably followed.
Meekness and quietness of spirit become in time the characteristics of the daily life. A submissive acceptance of the will of God, as it comes in the hourly events of each day, is shown; pliability in the hands of God to do or to suffer all the good pleasure of His will; sweetness under provocation; calmness in the midst of turmoil and bustle; a yielding to the wishes of others, and an insensibility to slights and affronts; absence of worry or anxiety; deliverance from care and fear. God’s glory and the welfare of His creatures, become the absorbing delight of the soul. Year after year such Christians are seen to grow more unworldly, more serene, more heavenly minded, more transformed, more like Christ until even their very faces express so much of the beautiful inward divine life that all who look at them cannot but take knowledge of them that they live with Jesus and are abiding in Him.
Have you not begun to feel dimly conscious of the voice of God speaking to you, in the depths of your soul, about these things? Has it not been a pain and a distress to you of late to discover how full life is are of self? Has not your soul been plunged into inward trouble and doubt about certain dispositions or pursuits in which you have been formerly accustomed to indulge? Have you not begun to feel uneasy with some of your habits of life and to wish that you could do differently in certain respects? Have not paths of devotedness and of service begun to open out before you with the longing thought, Oh, that I could walk them! All these questions and doubts and this inward yearning are the voice of the Good Shepherd in your heart, seeking to call you out of that which is contrary to His will. Let me entreat of you not to turn away from His gentle pleadings! The heights of Christian perfection can only be reached by each moment faithfully following the Guide who is to lead you there. He reveals the way to us one step at a time, in the little things of our daily lives, asking only on our part that we yield ourselves up to His guidance. Obey Him perfectly the moment you are sure of His will.
I knew a soul thus given up to follow the Lord wherever He might lead her, who in a very little while traveled from the depths of darkness and despair into the realization and actual experience of a most blessed union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Out of the midst of her darkness, she consecrated herself to the Lord, surrendering her will up altogether to Him that He might work in her to will and to do of His own good pleasure. Immediately He began to speak to her by His Spirit in her heart, suggesting to her some little acts of service for Him and troubling her about certain things in her habits and her life, showing her where she was selfish and un-Christlike and how she could be transformed. She recognized His voice and yielded to Him each thing He asked for the moment she was sure of His will. Her swift obedience was rewarded by a rapid progress, and day by day she was conformed more and more to the image of Christ until very soon her life became such a testimony to those around her that some even who had begun by opposing and disbelieving were forced to acknowledge that it was of God and were won to a similar surrender. If you would know a like blessing, abandon yourself, like her, to the guidance of your divine Master and shrink from no surrender for which He may call.
Things small to you may be in His eyes the key and the clue to the deepest springs of your being. No life can be complete that fails in its little things. A look, a word, a tone of voice even, however small they may seem to human judgment, are often of vital importance in the eyes of God. Whether you knew it or not, this, and nothing less than this, is what your consecration meant. It meant inevitable obedience. It meant that the will of your God was henceforth to be your will. You surrendered your liberty of choice. It meant an hourly following of Him, wherever He might lead you, without any turning back.
Let everything else go that you may live out, in a practical daily walk and conversation, the Christ-life you have dwelling within you. Day by day you will find Him bringing you more and more into conformity with His will in all things, molding you and fashioning you, as you are able to bear it, into a “vessel unto His honor, sanctified and meet for His use, and fitted to every good work.” So shall be given to you the sweet joy of being an “epistle of Christ, known and read of all men”; and your light shall shine so brightly that men seeing not you but your good works shall glorify not you but your Father which is in heaven.