THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE: ITS EFFECT
[p. 232] THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE: ITS EFFECT
The greatness, goodness, and wisdom of God revealed to the soul fills it with adoration, so that everything which makes Him known to me should call out worship, whatever the occasion may be. You get the perfect idea of this in the book of Revelation. In heaven, where I am free from all self-occupation, worship bursts forth; and now, when the calmness and rest of His presence is known, even the ordinary things of life call forth worship.
In this connection you will find that reading Scripture as a whole, as the revelation of Himself, will give you a grasp of God as He is, which will assist and lead to this worshipping sense. As a rule, I think Scripture should be read primarily with the thought that God is making Himself known to me. I ought, as I read the Scriptures, to seek to imbibe His mind, communicated to me through a spiritual medium, but in actual human scenes, which vividly present me to myself as if in them, and how God acts and judges with regard to me in them. I am thus learning Him in a variety of ways. In the Old Testament I find Him dealing with man as he is; feeble, and hindered by the intervention of any difficulty: sometimes with no water to drink, sometimes too much of it stopping his way. Satan is not so much seen there; but all creation, and man ostensibly hindering any one who is faithful to God on the earth. God shows His own that He is above circumstances, and how He does this is always interesting; but not only this, it also discloses to us His own nature, so that, as we read on, we are getting to know and understand Him.
In the New Testament His heart is declared to me by the Son of His love; and I am taught, not merely that He is above circumstances for His own, but that He places His own in the Son of His love above them too. Christ walked above circumstances here, in full rest of heart, in the Father’s love. As I read this record,
[p. 233] I comprehend the goodness and ways of God; I am in company with His heart, fulfilling its own wondrous will. But not only so, I find that, according to that will which I see accomplished in setting Christ at His own right hand, the church is set in Him, in all the majesty of God’s purpose, above every power and hindrance, in the cloudless, unfading blessedness of His presence and home, in that nearness and glory which satisfies His love.
There is no fear of your getting too full of Scripture; for where there is faithfulness, God will place you in circumstances where you will learn practically the truth of Himself which verbally He has committed to you; so that it becomes your verbatim saying of Him from your own experience.
The study and apprehension of God’s ways as a whole imparts a breadth and strength to the mind. It enables it to embrace, and, in a degree like the sun, to control all lower things, pressing them into their order and subjection to Him. You may cheer your spirit with detached portions of His word; but you do not acquire that breadth and volume, in the power of which you can reduce everything into its place before God, unless you possess in some degree, the comprehensive view which the apprehension of Him, in a variety of ways and places, imparts.