SUBJECTION TO THE LORD

SUBJECTION TO THE LORD

I hope you are really stronger for your little time at ————, but this will little avail unless you submit to watchfulness — not to overtax your strength. There is a voice to you in this check; your activities must be determined by your bodily ability, and not by inclination, and there is a great principle in this for everything. It is said to David, It is well that it was in thine heart. The intention is commended, but he is not permitted to carry it into effect. Hence we see that an inclination even for a service to the Lord, however commendable, is no index of my fitness or ability for executing it. Nathan is also corrected; he had said to David at first, Do all that is in thine heart, and this is what a true heart might naturally suppose to be the right thing, but the word of the Lord comes in and decides otherwise; David must not act according to the inclination of his heart, he is directed not to do so, though at the same time his inclination is commended. It is necessary to be subject to the Lord even when one is assured of having the very best desires, otherwise the desires would guide us and not the Lord. We should all agree that mere inclinations were no guide, but I think each of us would find it difficult to refuse the course that really approved desires as to service to the Lord define for us. We are not to be governed by them. There must be entire dependence on the Lord even where the desire to serve Him is all right, and one is made to feel the weakness in oneself on purpose that there may be full dependence on Him. Thus Paul, with the best desire to use his abilities for the Lord on his return from Paradise, found out that there was a check to him in his own flesh, and that he could not make it co-operate with him in his new acquisitions. He learns this great lesson that the Lord can do His own work even through a human channel without the abilities of the vessel, and therefore while he is unable to lend his ^[p. 255] abilities in commending the truth, the Lord teaches him that His grace is sufficient, and the apostle is content to be crippled that the power of Christ may be more known. This is a long story, but I want you to see the difference between good inclinations being your guide for activity and the Lord’s voice to you. I think the body is often allowed to limit our activity, in order that we may count more on the power of Christ. There is a constantly recurring sense of the weakness and incompetence of the body which sin has entailed, and while overweening anxiety about one’s body is much to be deprecated, yet we must remember that the Lord “taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man” (Psalm 147: 10), and that true humility and subjection to Him would not attempt to act as if one were dependent on one’s own power or exertions. I have no doubt that submission to the Lord in this way, as David learned, and as Paul learned, produces and promotes a tone and a colour in our whole lives; one inward, the other outward. That the Lord rules and that His grace is sufficient is the hourly experience. The sense of weakness or incompetence only enhances to the soul His sufficiency. “She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple” (Proverbs 31: 22). Every stitch is a distinct one, and while independence or even good inclinations had previously threaded the needle, now, on the contrary, dependence on God is the thread of silk and purple of which eventually the clothing is formed. The clothing figuratively sets forth the body as wholly and distinctly for the Lord, in other words, a body full of light. How blessed when, even here in this body of humiliation, the clothing can be beautiful, and costly in the Lord’s eye, because entirely of and for Him. “She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework” (Psalm 45: 14), “her clothing is of wrought gold” (verse 13); stitch after stitch in dependence on Him and for His pleasure. Now do you not see that even in the small matter of submitting to your bodily weakness you will have such practical constant dependence on the Lord that everything you do and say will bear the mark of it; the clothing will be precious to His eye; whereas if you are unsubject, the leaven of it will creep into everything that you are engaged in. You will attempt more than you ^[p. 256] are equal for, and be always made conscious of failure and disappointment, while, on the other hand, if you accept your inability in subjection to the Lord, you will be cheered by His marked interference on your behalf.