WHAT MAKES THIS WORLD A WILDERNESS TO US
WHAT MAKES THIS WORLD A WILDERNESS TO US
I have been thinking of you moving to a new place in the wilderness. I see that there is no real happiness here until we accept this world as really a vast howling desert — a dry and thirsty land where no water is. When we truly accept it as a place where there is nothing for the new man, then we look to the Lord alone as our resource:
‘Heavenly springs shall there restore thee,
Fresh from God’s exhaustless tides.’ (76:2)
We are saved out of Egypt — the world of judgment, by the death and resurrection of Christ, and we enter on His triumph, as we have walked through the Red Sea. His death — the only way out of our own death, and thus not only are we in peace, but the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. You first know the happy terms on which the blessed God is with you; next — thou there may be a long interval, that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made you free from the law of sin and death. You are not in liberty, but as you are in the life of Christ. Many have a sense of the love of God, and how He is towards them, who are not in liberty, that is, not living in the life of Christ. It is then you know Him in a new way, and you find your joys in that which ministers to His life. You are now peculiarly attached to Him; you were first drawn to Him by His work for you; now you know Him as your life, and you are so bound to Him in love that you can say, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8: 35). Now the fact of living His life of itself reduces this world to a wilderness;
[p. 14] there is nothing in it for the life of Christ. If you live His life, if He lives in you, you must live outside this scene; and as you do, you receive from Him the manna, that is, grace from Himself to live here as He lived here. But if you are not in His life, if Christ be not living in you, you could not live here as He lived here; you could not get the manna — the life which He lived here. No one could have His resources in the wilderness but Himself, and you must be in His life, He must live in you, before He could lead you into the resource that He had when He was in the world — which was a real wilderness to Him. If He lives in you, you are sure to get the manna:
‘There unfold His hidden treasures,
There His love’s exhaustless deep.’ (76:5)
I feel that we lose ground when we accept that which ministers to our natural life, and when we are not with constancy set in liberty from ourselves, in His life — jealous lest anything should divert us from living in His order of things.
The Lord grant that your happiness may not be from anything around you, but that you may so enjoy Christ outside of everything, that Jordan may be a real privilege to you — liberation in death with Christ from everything here. This doubtless is the happiest moment for any one who is truly in the wilderness.