THE INNER MAN RENEWED DAY BY DAY
THE INNER MAN RENEWED DAY BY DAY
Surely the blessed Lord has kept noted down the many kind attentions which now for many years have cheered me with the love of Christ through you, and hence I should go even far out of my way to see you in your failing health. I have been struck lately with the distinctness in which the “inner man” comes out in the sickness or suffering of the “outer man”. In health or prosperity this distinctness is not so clearly apprehended. In a way they seem one, but when sickness or affliction comes, then the new being becomes distinctly known, that it has nothing to do with the sickness or the affliction, though the body in which it is, suffers. On the contrary, if the link with Christ be simply maintained, it has a clearer and a fuller sense of how entirely free it is in its nature and life from the sufferings of the outer man, and of how it is really independent of the things which are so essential
†I mean by ‘naturally’ that where my life is that is the most natural place for me.
[p. 72] and necessary to the outer man; and this is very helpful, because it imparts a strength and personality to the inner man, which enables the sufferer not only to bear his sufferings better, but even if his sufferings were removed to give a prominence to the inner man — this new individuality, which he had not done before, nor was he so conscious of its great existence. Thus sickness and affliction in the Lord’s discipline help to remove that which interferes with our spiritual growth; for as the outer man perisheth the inner man is renewed day by day. Hence we often find that the greatest sufferers have the most joy in the Lord, and, as dissolution approaches, a more decided sense and ability to dispense with that which is perishing, and thus an “abundant entrance” is ministered. How blessed to feel in oneself such positive link in life and nature to Christ, that to pass away from all here would only consummate that which is the source of real enjoyment here in the midst of suffering; and that the blessed Lord who is ministering help to us in our infirmities here, down from the highest heaven, is the One we shall be with for ever when there is no more need of this help. What a peculiar sense of rest and enjoyment it gives one to taste even a little of the happiness of being with Him, for then He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. All enjoyment without a consciousness of His joy would be feeble and flickering, but when we can connect our joy with His, and as the fruit of His, as the moon borrows its light from the sun, we can always turn to His to brighten our own.
May He be so fully and vividly before your soul that your heart may make its boast in Him all the day long.