RESOURCE AND SANCTIFICATION
RESOURCE AND SANCTIFICATION
The Lord is one and His name one. He only can fully satisfy my heart. He knows what suits it, and He only has enough, and more than enough to meet it. Do I want strength? Who can surpass His? Love and care? Whose can surpass His? Wisdom? He is the wisdom of God. There is nothing that the human heart (made by Himself) requires, that it cannot find abundantly in Him. The more we visit the poor and suffering in this world, the less we think of our own sorrows, and the more we are touched with the way the Lord supports His own in the greatest sufferings.... I had a taste of what it is to part company with all here, and to find in the Lord enough. What [p. 138] gracious ways He uses to teach us the complete emptiness of everything here, and not the mere emptiness, but supplanting it by the most blessed reality — the Lord Himself. He remaineth; and He leads us into experiences of desolation here in order that we may not only see how little we know Him as the source of all joy, but in order that we may turn to Him and find not only relief but full resource in Himself. It is only in solitude that you realise this.
I am much interested in the subject of sanctification. If there is anything that I am naturally proud of, any accomplishment or quality, it will sink into death as a progress in Christ; but I get what is so infinitely better that I feel I have not lost but gained.
The discipline we receive in this world is to separate us from it. By grace we are not of it. We should naturally like to find everything pleasant here. The Father’s discipline is that we should be “partakers of his holiness”; that is, to be as completely separate from everything that is not of God as He is. We belong to Christ in heaven, and He has sent us into this world for Himself. We are often thinking of going out of it to Him, instead of apprehending and owning that we do not belong to the world, but we belong to Him who has been rejected by the world, and that we are only in the world because He has sent us into it. He would not say that He sends us into the world if we were not through His grace morally out of it.
It is very interesting and encouraging to see how every one in the long run reaches the top desire of his heart. “He that seeketh findeth”. Devotedness is what we most need. May we be more in prayer for it.