CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5
Difficulties Concerning Consecration
Christians should not be ignorant of the temptations that seem to stand ready to oppose every onward step of their progress heavenward and that are especially active when the soul is awakened to a hunger and thirst after righteousness and begins to reach out after the fullness that is ours in Christ.
The one chief temptation that meets the soul at this juncture is the same that assaults it all along the pathway, at every step of its progress; namely, the question as to feelings. Because we do not feel that God has taken us in hand, we cannot believe that He has. As usual, we put feeling first and faith second, and fact last of all. Now, God’s invariable rule in everything is fact first, faith second, and feeling last of all. The way to meet this temptation is to adopt His order by putting faith before feeling. Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, according to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to Him, either in your heart or life. If He shows you anything, give it to the Lord immediately, and say in reference to it, “Thy will be done.” If He shows you nothing, then believe that there is nothing and conclude that you have given Him all. Then recognize that it must be the fact, that, when you give yourself to God, He accepts you; and at once let your faith take hold of this fact. If you are steadfast in this reckoning, sooner or later the feeling will come. Is this the way in which you have been acting toward God in this matter of consecration? You have given yourself to Him over and over daily, perhaps for months, but you have invariably come away from your seasons of consecration wondering whether you really have given yourself after all and whether He has taken you. And because you have not felt any change, you have concluded at last, after many painful tossings, that the thing has not been done. Do you know, dear believer, that this sort of perplexity will last forever unless you cut it short by faith? Come to the point of considering the matter an accomplished and settled thing, and leave it there before you can possibly expect any change of feeling whatever.
The Levitical law of offerings to the Lord settles this as a primary fact, that everything given to Him becomes, by that very act, something holy, set apart from all other things, something that cannot without sacrilege be put to any other uses. The giver might have made his offering very grudgingly and halfheartedly, but, having made it, the matter was taken out of his hands altogether, and the devoted thing, by God’s own law, became “most holy unto the Lord.” It was not made holy by the state of mind of the giver but by the holiness of the divine receiver. All Israel would have been aghast at the man who, having once given his offering, should have reached out his hand to take it back. Yet, day after day, earnest-hearted Christians, with no thought of the sacrilege they are committing, are guilty in their own experience of a similar act, by giving themselves to the Lord in solemn consecration and then, through unbelief, taking back that which they have given.
Because God is not visibly present to the eye, it is difficult to feel that a transaction with Him is real. What we need, therefore, is to see that God’s presence is a certain fact always, and that every act of our soul is done before Him, and that a word spoken in prayer is as really spoken to Him as if our eyes could see Him and our hands could touch Him. Then we shall cease to have such vague conceptions of our relations with Him and shall feel the binding force of every word we say in His presence.
I know some will say here, “Ah yes, but if He would only speak to me and say that He took me when I gave myself to Him, I would have no trouble then in believing it.” No, of course you would not; but then where would be the room for faith? Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but believing when we cannot see, hear, or feel is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is by faith. Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honor God by our faith. It is always he who believes who has the witness, not he who doubts. When we surrender ourselves to the Lord, according to His own command, He does then and there receive us, and from that moment we are His. A real transaction has taken place that cannot be violated without dishonor on our part, and that we know will not be violated by Him.
In Deuteronomy 26:17–19, we see God’s way of working under these circumstances. “Thou hast avouched the LORD this day to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken unto his voice: and the LORD hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments … and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the LORD thy God, as he hath spoken.”
When we declare the Lord our God and that we will walk in His ways and keep His commandments, He declares us to be His and that we shall keep all His commandments. And from that moment He takes possession of us. This has always been His principle of working.
Look at a New Testament declaration that approaches the subject from a different side, but which settles it, I think, quite as definitely. It is in 1 John 5:14–15, and reads, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” Is it according to God’s will that you should be entirely surrendered to Him? There can be, of course, but one answer to this, for He has commanded it. Therefore, on God’s own word, you are obliged to know that He hears you. And knowing this much, you are compelled to go further and know that you have the petitions that you have desired of Him. That you have, I say—not will have, or may have, but have now in actual possession. It is thus that we “obtain promises” by faith. It is thus that we have “access by faith” into the grace that is given us in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this way, and this way only, that we come to know our hearts “purified by faith” and are enabled to live by faith, to stand by faith, to walk by faith.
You have trusted the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and know something of what it is to belong to the family of God and to be made an heir of God through faith in Christ. Now you feel the longing to be conformed to the image of your Lord. You know there must be an entire surrender of yourself to Him, that He may work in you all the good pleasure of His will. And you have tried over and over to do it but up until now without any apparent success. Come once more to Him, in a surrender of your whole self to His will, as complete as you know how to make it. Ask Him to reveal to you, by His Spirit, any hidden rebellion; and if He reveals nothing, then believe that there is nothing. You have wholly yielded yourself to the Lord, and from henceforth you do not in any sense belong to yourself. Never listen to a suggestion to the contrary. If the temptation comes to wonder whether you really have completely surrendered yourself, meet it with an assertion that you have. Do not even argue the matter. Repel any such idea instantly and with determination. You meant it then; you mean it now; you have really done it. Your emotions may clamor against the surrender, but your will must hold firm. It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose. And your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need to attend to.
Believe that God takes that which you have surrendered and consider that it is His. There is nothing more for you to do, except to be from now on an obedient child, for you are the Lord’s now, absolutely and entirely in His hands. He has undertaken the whole care and management and forming of you, and will, according to His Word, “work in you that which is well pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ.” If you begin to question your surrender or God’s acceptance of it, then your wavering faith will produce a wavering experience. You will find it a great help to put your reckoning into words and say over and over to yourself and to your God, “Lord, I am Yours. I yield myself up entirely to You, and I believe that You accept me. I leave myself with You. Work in me all the good pleasure of Your will, and I will only lie still in Your hands and trust You.”
Make this a daily, definite act of your will, and many times a day recur to it, as being your continual attitude before the Lord. Confess it to yourself. Confess it to your God. Confess it to your friends. Sooner or later, you will find that you are being made into “a holy people unto the LORD, as he hath spoken.”