CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 17
The Joy of Obedience
Having spoken of some of the difficulties in this life of faith, let me now speak of some of its joys. And foremost among these stands the joy of obedience.
Long ago I came across this sentence somewhere: “Perfect obedience would be perfect happiness, if only we had perfect confidence in the power we were obeying.” The rest has been revealed to me, not as a vision but as a reality. I have seen in the Lord Jesus the Master to whom we may yield up our implicit obedience and, taking His yoke upon us, may find our perfect rest.
You little know, dear hesitating soul, of the joy you are missing. The Master has revealed Himself to you and is calling for your complete surrender, and you shrink and hesitate. A measure of surrender you are willing to make and think indeed it is fit and proper that you should. But a total abandonment, without any reserves, seems to you too much to be asked for. You are afraid of it. It involves too much, you think, and is too great a risk. To be measurably obedient you desire; to be perfectly obedient appalls you.
You see other souls who seem able to walk with easy consciences in a far wider path than that which appears to be marked out for you. It seems strange, and perhaps hard to you, that you must do what they need not and must leave undone what they have liberty to do.
Your Lord says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” You have His commandments; those you envy have them not. You know the mind of your Lord about many things, in which, as yet, they are walking in darkness. Is it a cause for regret that your soul is brought into such near and intimate relations with your Master that He is able to tell you things that those who are farther off may not know? Do you not realize what a tender degree of intimacy is implied in this?
Many relations in life require from the different parties only very moderate degrees of devotion. We may have really pleasant friendships with one another and yet spend a large part of our lives in separate interests and widely differing pursuits. When together, we may greatly enjoy one another’s society and find many congenial points, but separation is not any especial distress to us, and other and more intimate friendships do not interfere. There is not enough love between us to give us either the right or the desire to enter into and share one another’s most private affairs. Other relationships in life are different. The friendship becomes love. The two hearts give themselves to a union of the soul. Separate interests and separate paths in life are no longer possible. The deepest desire of each heart is that it may know every secret wish or longing of the other in order that it may fly on the wings of the wind to gratify it.
Do they not rather glory in these very obligations and inwardly pity, with a tender yet exulting joy, the poor far-off ones who dare not come so near? If you have ever loved any of your fellow human beings enough to find sacrifice and service on their behalf a joy; if a wholehearted abandonment of your will to the will of another has ever gleamed across you as a blessed and longed-for privilege or as a sweet and precious reality, then, by all the tender, longing love of your heavenly lover, I would entreat you to let it be so toward Christ!
He loves you with more than the love of friendship. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so does He rejoice over you, and nothing but the bride’s surrender will satisfy Him. He has given you all, and He asks for all in return. The slightest reserve will grieve him to the heart. He spared not Himself, and how can you spare yourself? For your sake He poured out in a lavish abandonment all that He had, and for His sake you must pour out all that you have, without stint or measure.
If, then, you are hearing the loving voices of your Lord calling you out into a place of nearness to Himself that will require a separation from all else and that will make an enthusiasm of devotedness not only possible, but necessary, will you shrink or hesitate? Will you think it hard that He reveals to you more of His mind than He does to others, and that He will not allow you to be happy in anything that separates you from Himself? Do you want to go where He cannot go with you or to have pursuits that He cannot share?
No! You will spring out to meet His lovely will with an eager joy. You will glory in the very narrowness of the path He marks out for you. The perfect happiness of perfect obedience will dawn upon your soul, and you will begin to know something of what Jesus meant when He said, “I delight to do thy will, O my God.”
Do you think the joy in this will be all on your side? My friends, we are not able to understand this—the delight, the satisfaction, the joy our Lord has in us. That we should need Him is easy to comprehend; that He should need us seems incomprehensible. Continually at every heart He is knocking, asking to be taken in as the supreme object of love. “Will you have Me,” He says to the believer, “to be your beloved? Will you follow Me into suffering and loneliness and endure hardness for My sake and ask for no reward but My smile of approval and My word of praise? Will you throw yourself, with a passion of abandonment, into My will? Will you give up to Me the absolute control of yourself and of all that you have? Will you be content with pleasing Me, and Me only? May I have My way with you in all things? Will you come into so close a union with Me as to make a separation from the world necessary? Will you accept Me for your heavenly Bridegroom, and leave all others to cleave only to Me?”
In a thousand ways He makes this offer of union with Himself to every believer. But all do not say yes to Him. Other loves and other interests seem to them too precious to be cast aside. They do not miss the joy of heaven because of this. But they miss an unspeakable present joy.
You, however, are not one of these. From the very first your soul has cried out eagerly and gladly to all His offers, “Yes, Lord, yes!” The life of love upon which you have entered gives you the right to a lavish outpouring of all of you upon your beloved One. An intimacy and friendship, which more distant souls cannot enter upon, become now, not only your privilege, but also your duty. Your Lord can make known His secrets, and to you He looks for an instant response to every requirement of His love.
What a wonderful, glorious, unspeakable privilege upon which you have entered! How little it will matter to you if men shall hate you and shall separate you from their company and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for His dear sake! You may well “rejoice in that day, and leap for joy,” for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for if you are a partaker of His suffering, you shall also be of His glory.
He sees in you the “travail of His soul” and is satisfied. Your love and devotedness are His precious reward for all He has done for you. It is unspeakably sweet to Him. Do not be afraid, then, to let yourself go in a heart-whole devotedness to your Lord that can brook no reserves. Others may not approve, but He will, and that is enough. Do not stint or measure your obedience or your service. Let your heart and your hand be as free to serve Him as His heart and hand were to serve you. Let Him have all there is of you—body, soul, mind, spirit, time, talents, voice, everything. Lay your whole life open before Him that He may control it. Do not let there be a day nor an hour in which you are not consciously doing His will and following Him wholly.
Christ Himself, when He was on earth, declared the truth that there was no blessedness equal to the blessedness of obedience. It is more blessed to hear and obey His will than to have been the earthly mother of our Lord or to have carried Him in our arms and nourished Him at our breasts!
May our surrendered hearts reach out with an eager delight to discover and embrace the lovely will of our loving God!