WHAT AM I LEARNING?

WHAT AM I LEARNING?

It is a great thing to be able to apprehend the particular lesson which the Lord is teaching us at the moment. If we are going on with Him, we must be learning something. It is not merely that spiritual health is preserved, though that is necessary, in order that one may the more effectually learn.

In the earlier stages of a christian’s life it is easy to note the lesson for the moment. Forgiveness, peace, liberty, and so on. But when we have arrived where Israel had in the days of Joshua, when “the land rested from war”, when it is no longer the question whether the old man is to be heard, or Christ, but when what is before us is simply and exclusively the knowledge of Christ, the lesson is not so marked. And yet there must continually be some new lesson, if there is any advance. If a tree grows, there must be new buds. I find that there is one great mark of the lesson which, in His grace, He is teaching me; and that is, the way in which that particular line of things is presented to me, and pressed upon me in every scripture which I read or hear. It is ever recurring. The writing on the fleshy table of the heart is not done without digging deep. There is line upon line; here a little, and there a little; but there is a deepening sense of light respecting the lesson of truth which the Lord is teaching me. It is always something of Christ - be it His sympathy, or how He suffered here, or how He enjoyed the love of the Father; and it practically reproduces in me the life of Jesus. I increase in the knowledge of Him; and as I do, I am discovering that greater things yet are to be learned, and therefore I am never proud of ^[p. 300] my learning; and as soon as one lesson is in a degree learned, I am led on to another; and every advance, like every fresh bud on a tree, only imparts tone and vigour to all the previous acquisitions.

I say all this that your reading of the word may not be formal. It is quite right to obtain a knowledge of Scripture, as to its general meaning; but the more I do so, the more am I helped in the formative power of the word, if my heart is really set on the Lord. A painter puts on colour after colour, and thus forms his picture; he studies the nature and use of colours first, but it is the skilful adaptation of them that creates the picture. It is well to read and to get knowledge, but unless you are in communion, you will not grow in likeness to what you admire, as recorded in the Word.