WHOLE-HEARTED DEVOTEDNESS
WHOLE-HEARTED DEVOTEDNESS
... I quite echo your words — ‘How one’s heart longs at times for more wholehearted devotedness’. I say to myself. What would produce a revival? What would you say? I find many godly, some devoted, but very few “virtuous”. “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies” (Proverbs 31: 10). Virtuous is having no heart for anything but Himself, what is of Himself. I enjoyed my [p. 40] retirement very much. I cannot tell you how death was rolled in on all that I hitherto was attracted to, and I had great enjoyment in my retreat. I never enjoyed contemplation more. I had no immediate claim on me, and when I was really riveted on the Lord’s love and ways it was truly delightful, so real, so beautiful, so permanent.
I increasingly feel that the Lord would not have allowed us to be tested as we were by the ———— teaching if we had been holding the truth in integrity. No truth can be received in power without an excruciating effect. This saying attracted some of them in D————. The new and eternal sensibly displaces the old and temporal. The more you are in Christ’s life the less you are in natural life, though you have greater power in natural duties. I find everywhere that there is little interest about the church; where there is devotedness it is generally confined to the gospel. I think that there is a great lack in praying for servants individually. When I hear someone praying for the whole church I long to ask him — ‘Do you pray in particular for those known to yourself?’ Surely if I do not pray for those whom I know I cannot truly pray for those I do not know. I feel differently to the person that I habitually pray for. I wonder what you would think of the little meetings in ————, I sometimes feel as if the testimony were dying out here. It cannot be maintained but in rigid separation from the world.
It quite cheered me your lamentation after more devotedness, because what I dread is activity without it. I believe the Lord in His love for my company in spirit and mind, would rather that I had one thought in concert with Himself, than if I had done every good work that was done in the town on that day. The Lord bless you much.