PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE WITH CHRIST

PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE WITH CHRIST

The nearer we are to Him, in personal acquaintance, the easier we shall pass from the sea to the shore. The woman in Luke 7 is a beautiful pattern. To get near Him was her simple purpose. Her conscience would have said, ‘How can you? - you are a sinner’. ‘Yes, truly’, she might reply, ‘but He is my Saviour’; and the nearer a sinner is to the Saviour, the more assured is the conscience, and the truer the faith in Him. Her sensibility would have said, ‘You are not fit to go into a Pharisee’s house’. ‘Yes, truly’, she might have replied, ‘but I am above my feelings, or what any one among men may say of me, because I seek One above all men. And as for self-consideration, I have found such an Object for my heart in Him, that I delight to devote to Him the thing I once prized most for myself’. With what impressions, and stores of His untold love, must she have returned to her perhaps solitary home! She could say, ‘I know Him, my heart is anchored in His heart’.

How much more of it should we know who are united to Him by the Holy Spirit! Can we not say, though we may have to encounter storms and adverse currents, trials from without and within, before we reach Him, ‘I know Him, He is on shore, He is in heaven. He is the Forerunner; I am going to Him; and the heavier the sea, and the more adverse the winds, which occur on the voyage, the more is my heart assured of the link which binds me to Him’?

^[p. 276] Stephen is an example of this. As the storm increased, and reached its height, he only knew the more deeply where his heart was anchored, and his soul increased in vigour and cheer.

Blessed Lord! our first distinct acquaintance with Thee is only deepening all the way to Thee. The conscience is cleared, sensibility supplanted, self-consideration superseded, and Thyself the eternal delight of our hearts!