THE NEW STATE ON EARTH
[p. 21] THE NEW STATE ON EARTH
Thankful I am to be allowed to greet you at the beginning of another year, as one cleaving to the Lord. You are a tree planted by the waters. The world itself is dreary, but you are planted by the waters, that is, you have supplies of His grace, making known to you the purposes of His love. You are now to grow as a lily, and to cast forth your roots as Lebanon. The supplies are to nurture and strengthen the heart first, as you will see in Jeremiah 17: 7, 8, and are given to the one “that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is”. You have trusted, and you are blessed, and you are planted by the rivers of water. Your roots are spreading out by the river, and the blessed effect of this progress in divine favour will be, that you will “not see when heat cometh”; when the fierce influences of this world bear down on you; and simply because you are so strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man, which the heat cannot touch; and the evidence of the world’s powerlessness to affect you will be the fact that your “leaf shall be green”. Every expression about you will wear the colour of unimpaired, unhindered life, its activity unchecked, no fading, no withering.
The one blessed is not without trials here; but the supplies are so great, not only the water (privileges), but the river that never fails, and is exhaustless, that you shall not see when the heat cometh. But more than this; if privileges fail, if the ordinary channels of blessings cease or be restrained, if it be a year of drought, you will not be careful, you will be able to rise above it. Your strength will not give way. You shall not cease from yielding fruit. What a beautiful tree! Your green leaf, every little detail of your life, is not to be discoloured by the world and its destructive influences. If the leaf be kept green, the health of the tree is proved. If every expression of my life is in divine freshness and vigour, there must be inward health and power of [p. 22] constitution. If the leaf loses any of its beauty and colour because of the adverse influences with which I am surrounded in this world, there is evidently a failure somewhere within. I do not recommend you to watch the leaves, but if there be anything like discolouration in the leaves, you will need to look to the river, the fountain of supply. There must be some failure or defect in appropriating the supply, if there be not power to resist the “heat”, the power of this world. We are not only alive in Christ, but we live in His life, and we enjoy it as we resist that which would hinder it; we are made conscious of the power of Christ in us, as we are enabled to hold on in His beauty and freshness against all comers. Now the tree that can keep green under the terrible heat need not fear when there are no supplies here, when it is a year of drought. In passing through this scene, we have to encounter both. There is the heat, the adverse influences bearing down on us, ready to exhaust and wither us up; and there is the drought, the shortness of supply, or rather no supply; for there is really none from the wilderness as such. We drink of the rock that follows us, and that rock is Christ. But yet in spite of all this, we are to be the tree that shall not “cease from yielding fruit”. Fruits are acts, positive services; the leaves are the tout ensemble.
The Lord grant that your leaves may be kept green in spite of the heat - the burning influences of this world; the tree yielding fruit in its season, though in a scene where nothing can contribute to it. This is the mission of the serving one; and the recompense is not here, but at the resurrection of the just.