IN COMPANY WITH THE LORD'S INTERESTS NO. 1

IN COMPANY WITH THE LORD’S INTERESTS NO. 1

I hope you had a prosperous journey, after leaving those dear people yesterday. It is a great thing to keep the best company in divine things; the most blessed effect is the consequence. “While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof” (Song of Songs 1: 12). Well, I trust that we both feel that our blessed Lord has had us at His banqueting house, and that He has prepared us for increased devotedness to His interests here. I find it a very testing question when anything has to be decided on — which course would be for His interest — the paramount thing before the mind being His interests. I desire that we should be in company as to this, and I am persuaded that the more separate we are the more we promote the interests of the Lord.

I have been writing on ‘How to promote the unity of all saints’, and as I study the subject I am increasingly convinced that the more we are apart from everything here for God, the more we are able to help others, and the more influence — spiritual influence — we shall have with them. There is a great moral difference between the acceptance accorded to one who is a great donor in temporal things and the acceptance inspired by, and rendered to, the “virtuous woman”, I mean the saint ^[p. 101] who is absolutely devoted to the Lord. I can tell the Lord, what I desire for you, and He knows it exactly. Every one is a friend to him that giveth gifts, but every spiritual person honours and delights in the one who is most spiritual. May this honour and delight be more yours day by day. May you advance more and more, and may we be increasingly in company with the Lord’s present interests.

NO. 2 The more I think of being interested in the Lord’s interests the more vast and amazing does it seem to me that we should be allowed and invited by Him into so great a privilege. First, I find that He is near me, and so fully interested about all that concerns me, and then in nearness to Him, I regard every one whom I meet, or am connected with, as He would desire, and I seek for them what would suit His interests and pleasure. I meet with people that you do not, and you meet with and are connected with people in a way that I am not; each one we meet and are connected with would evoke a distinct notice and attention from Him if He were in our places. Now, if we were really near Him, this distinct notice and attention is what we, in our measure, should render through His grace acting in us: and it is just here that I feel one fails, some-times giving the notice and attention suited for A to B, not having Him sufficiently before the soul. There can be no rule on the subject, but if one were really near Him one would act to relations and to all others as would suit Him, and the interests which He has at heart; we should not give one too much attention and another too little. We should not allow one claim to divert us from others, for however great and incumbent any one’s claim might be, it is after all His interests in the place, or in our circle that are to be paramount, and if I am not able to take an interest in all that with which He connects me, there must be weakness somewhere; I must have lost my balance somewhere. The point with me is — How can I take in all His interests in the circle in which He sets me according to His own mind? I must not overlook ^[p. 102] any of them. The lamp is not for every room in the house, but it is feeble and imperfect if it does not cast light on every object in the room where it is placed, though the one nearest to it, or needing most of it, may necessarily take in most of its light, and that is quite right; but nothing in the room, the sphere to which it is appointed, must be unprovided with a suited share of the light.

It is in their extent and variety that the magnitude of the Lord’s interests press on me; if I am not able to enter into them it is plain that I am not in concert with Him; but as I am, how occupied, how engrossed, how filled up is my time, and my heart; nay, everything assumes a weight and an importance which I cannot explain to any other, and then even hearing about His interests would awaken prayer and remembrance in me. I should feel that I had not the mind of a man but the mind of Christ.

The Lord lead you to be so near to Himself that you may have great skill, as well as enjoyment of heart, in casting the suited ray on every object in the circle in which He has placed you, and so enter increasingly into the magnificence of His grace.