MY COMMONEST DEFECT IS THE ONE WHICH NEEDS MOST TO BE CORRECTED
[p. 90] MY COMMONEST DEFECT IS THE ONE WHICH NEEDS MOST TO BE CORRECTED
... I hope you are better in every way now. The jewel is in the casket, or, in other words the bird is in the cage. The bird is the new being, and it sings to the glory of God; the cage is the body. There are many alterations and improved modes effected in the cage, in order that the bird may be more truly happy and gratifying to the owner. So the body of the saint is dealt with by the Lord in order that what is precious to Him may be more truly for His glory. How blessed (as the old woman in Shetland said) to feel that ‘because of Christ I am a revenue of glory to God’.
I have remarked lately that the commonest defect in us, however inoffensive, is the one that needs not only to be most corrected, but, as it is corrected, the good effect appears in every detail of one’s life. I was writing to a person the other day who is constitutionally inert, and I went on to remark that if she could overcome this, the dilatoriness which it causes, unpunctuality, &c., the result would be that an animation would be imparted to her whole being. It is not easy to find out always your commonest fault. I find out mine by the way the Lord speaks to me, and by the way the Father disciplines me. I believe whatever balks my communion with the Lord is my commonest failing. One must, of course, know what communion is first before one can lose it. There can be no communion until I am sensibly clean. It is the feet of clean people which are washed, not those of unclean people. I am ‘clean’, suited to His eye, first; and if I get soiled it is to the trouble of my own conscience; it does not change or affect the Father’s heart towards me, because Christ has set me outside of everything, to the eternal satisfaction of His heart, but my conscience is soiled when I am out of communion, or rather the soil throws me out of communion, and I am unable to take my true place near Him, because I have contracted what is unsuited to the light. You will always find the truer you are, that the [p. 91] thing you confess first on retiring to your own room is the plague of your heart; and if you do not feel it, you are not really in the light, and you are not restored. If you are restored you are sensible of two things — one, that he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool, and the other blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.