Chapter 8: REIGNING IN LIFE.
Chapter 8: REIGNING IN LIFE.
“Much more they which receive abundance of grace shall reign in life by one, Christ Jesus.”-- Rom 5:17.
HOW SIGNIFICANT, HOW exhilarating are these words! Not the life when we have passed the gate of pearl, but the life that is now; not our life when we stand on the brow of the transfiguration mount, but the life at home, or in the daily walks and common places of existence. It is possible that there is a life to be lived in the common round and the daily task, so royal, so radiant, so blessed, that those who live it may be said to reign in life.
In a meeting of comparatively obscure people in New York, I heard a washerwoman say that ever since the power of God had come into her life, washing to her was what playing on the piano was to young ladies. I don’t know what notion she had of piano-playing, but she looked very happy about it.
Do you reign in your life? When you speak of reigning in life you have a conception at once of victory. Is your life one of victory? Do you put your foot down on passion, or are you beneath its heel? Do you know what it is to live day after day free from known sin, delivered from the power of the adversary, and able by the help of God to tread upon the high places? There are a good many people who exist. Do you live? Have you the abundant life of Christ, the life that is more than victorious?
When we speak of reigning in life, we think also of a grace in life. You may do what is right, but you do it grudgingly or with difficulty; the wheels creak a good deal; there is a jar. Nobody coming into your home could point out any breach of the ten commandments, and yet somehow there is a want of ease and joy and blessedness. Someone put an advertisement in one of our papers the other day, “Wanted, a Christian companion, but she must be happy.” As if Christian companions were not generally happy people. What is your life in this respect? Is there a consciousness with those who surround you in your daily life that religion is a bright and blessed and beautiful thing? Do you commend it, and so reign?
Then I think we associate the idea of bounty with those that reign. You expect the king to be able to throw largess to his subjects. Are you able to give away much of your religion, or are you so occupied in keeping the little spark aglow that you have none to spare for others?
1. It may be, first, because you do not realize that the abundance of God’s grace is for you.
You may have an idea that there is some favoritism with God, that some people are born happy, and that their religious life must be different from that of others because their temperament and disposition are so happy.
There is NO FAVORITISM WITH GOD.
Just as the spring flowers, the sunshine, and the pure air are for all, as free to the beggar as to the sovereign, so God’s abundant grace is for every man and woman, and there is nothing that anyone has ever had which you may not have if you will. The same stream is passing your door, but you do not utilize the power to drive your water wheel. The same electricity is in the air, but you haven’t learned to make it flash your messages or do the work of your home. The same grace that made a Luther, a Knox, a Latimer, a Ridley Havergal or a Spurgeon, is for you today, and if you are living a low-down life, beaten and thwarted and dashed down and constantly compelled to admit shortcomings and failure, understand it is not because there is any favoritism on God’s part, because all the Holy Ghost’s power and everything which is stored in Jesus Christ is waiting to make you a saint, and to lift you to the level which you pine for in your best moments. All the power of the Almighty is waiting to help you; the same abundant grace is waiting for us all.
2. If we admit this, the reason why we do not reign in life may be because we do not distinguish between praying and talking.
There is a profound difference between entreating for a thing and appropriating it. You may admit that God’s abundant grace is near you through Jesus Christ, and yet you may not quite see the necessity of learning how to take. Some people are always TELEGRAPHING TO HEAVEN for God to send a cargo of blessing to them, but they are not at the wharf-side to unload the vessel when it comes. How many of God’s richest blessings for which you have been praying for years have come right close to you, but you do not know how to lay hold of and use them.
Mark: “They that receive abundance of grace shall reign.” The emphasis is not on grace, not on abundance, but on receiving it. The whole grace of God may be round your life today, but if you have not learned to take it in, it won’t help you.
All that God has is within your reach, but you must learn to take it. If a man hears that he has suddenly come into a fortune, and that money is waiting for him in the bank, he goes there by the first train, but he doesn’t ask for it as if it were to be made a present to him. He goes in and says:
“This is my name. You have money standing in that name, and I have come to claim it.”
There are many things in prayer that we cannot be certain of because we have no definite promise to stand upon, but there are also many things in the Book which are waiting for us to come for them, and God says, “If you will come and take them you may have them.” You have only to go to God, and, supposing you are in a right condition (it may be that you are not), you may open your entire nature to God, and believe that as you claim, God gives. “He that asketh, receiveth.” If you want Christ to be your purity, Christ to be your power, Christ to be your salvation, kneel before Him; breathe in what God has promised to bestow; and reckon that as you open your nature to take, God Almighty gives. You have no emotion, no rush of feeling, no consciousness of reception, but you leave your closet and go forth to your daily life, you descend into the midst of turmoil and temptation, but all the time yon are reckoning that what you dared humbly and reverently to claim in the name of Jesus, God Almighty gave.
The devil says, “You have nothing.” You say, “I have.” “You don’t feel it?” “I don’t.” “You haven’t it then.”
“Yes, I have, because ‘he that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and I reckon on God that it is so whether I feel it or not.”
3. But suppose that this yet doesn’t quite touch your case. It may be that your hands are not empty. You need to have the empty hand if you would be filled. You cannot take because your hands are full of evil, or of the world.
Dr. Guinness told me that at one time all the water was shut out of their house in Derbyshire. They couldn’t understand what happened, and they went down to search for the cause. They went to the water-works and it wasn’t there. At last they took up the joint between the house and the main, and found a great toad there. The house could not receive the water from the reservoir because the orifice was choked.
God is going to turn His search-light upon things in your life that you have hidden from your dearest. Are you not conscious that if certain sins were mentioned, a certain sin, you would wince? You are living in the indulgence of some evil habit; you are living for the world or the flesh; you have some secret in your life that keeps cropping up in your holiest moments. There may be a man or a woman living somewhere with whom you have vowed you would never speak again. There is a record somewhere that has never been cleared up. God Almighty cannot save you unless you are willing that He should deal with that; you must be judged as those who do not want to be ashamed at last, but would hear the Master’s blessed “Well done” when they meet Him. You must stand before the judgment seat of Christ. You must be prepared to let God sweep out of your life that which is hindering you from accepting His best gifts.
Oh, I pray that we may bury once and forever, as in the grave of Christ, the shackles which have fettered us, the sins which have bound us, and may find the new life of Christ with abundant grace which shall enable us to reign in life.