THE DEPTH AND FULNESS OF GOD'S LOVE LEARNED IN HIS OWN SPHERE

THE DEPTH AND FULNESS OF GOD’S LOVE LEARNED IN HIS OWN SPHERE

My intention was to lead souls to see and find the divine sphere which Canaan represents for their rest and occupation, and not the wilderness and its necessities, to which we would too much confine God’s love and care for us. Once we are really through the Red ^[p. 190] Sea - the death of Christ - we must be in dependence on God here, and this we are taught in the wilderness. But as a christian I have much more, I am dead with Christ, this is Jordan; and I am quickened and raised up with Him, and made to sit down together with Him in heavenly places, and that is Canaan.

Now the question is, and the point of my teaching, Where do I best learn the goodness of the love of God? In the wilderness from His care, thought and provision for me there, or in Canaan where cities I did not build, and vineyards I did not plant are given to me, where the whole heart of God is in its proper circle and sphere? I say, If I learn Him even a little in Canaan, I can easily reckon on Him in the wilderness if I know Him at all in the wide field of His love, and as it has secured a portion for me in the riches of the glory of His inheritance, I can easily and simply see how comparatively small it is for Him to care for me in my little field in the wilderness. If I am delivered from my enemies and out of myself, I must be in dependence, and nowhere else; but dependence is often lauded because of the gain which accrues from it in the wilderness, and this is not the highest thing, nay, on the contrary, it often makes a soul dry, and he is thinking of nothing else but of bringing God into his circumstances, and then rejoicing as he finds Him acting in them, instead of rising up and seeing God, as I may say, in His own circumstances, making known His love to me, so that in the knowledge of Him the eyes of my heart are enlightened to know the hope of His calling, and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in His saints. Of course, there can be nothing but dependence here, but I find that dependence is made the greatest good, because of the present gain derived from it in the wilderness, and not because it leads me into the wide domain of the Father’s house and glory, certifying to me the depth and fulness of His love. So that people talk of their gains from ^[p. 191] dependence in the wilderness, as if that were the utmost of God’s love for us. It is plain that in God’s own sphere we shall ever be, and that all we learn of it now is for eternity. The wilderness which teaches me dependence must pass away.