TRANSFORMED
TRANSFORMED
I was saying this morning that in order to enjoy and use the power given to us we must be dependent on Christ, as Elisha was on Elijah. One must have the sense — I cannot do without Thee; thy Spirit only can sustain me here in Thine absence, and nothing can satisfy me but Thy company.
In the afternoon I spoke from 2 Corinthians 3: 18 — our right through grace to the glory, and the effect of it. Jonah typifies Christ’s sufferings, Solomon, His glory. His sufferings obtain relief for us from all our misery, but His glory satisfies us. Many are relieved who are not satisfied. Is not that true? Do you think that you know much of [p. 161] the effect of the glory — how from being there you are transformed from natural prepossessions to God’s mind, as in Psalm 73, or Paul with respect to the thorn in the flesh — changed entirely from the judgment of things which we had formed from our own feelings into His judgment of things?
The queen of Sheba was not transformed. I am only in the new place as I am transformed. I have a right through grace to all. I do not obtain right as I set my foot on the place, like Joshua; I have the right before I set my foot on it, but I do not know the good of it, and I cannot speak of it as mine until I have the good of it. I think much harm has been done by accepting J.N.D.’s abstract statements of God’s grace to us as equivalent to our conscious knowledge of the new place they would set us in. I believe there is a great deal of practical infidelity even with regard to what we openly avow to accept. Faith is more than believing what I read; I have an inward conviction wrought by the Spirit of a divine reality.
I have been meditating here on what would characterise one for Christ. Thank the Lord, we all know something of the full and blessed way He has been for us; but I feel how little one is so satisfied, I might say replete with Him-self, that now His interests absolutely command my attention. “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her” (Proverbs 31: 11). How wondrous to know that we are in this relation to our blessed Lord.