WORLDLY ASSOCIATIONS

WORLDLY ASSOCIATIONS

The Lord would not allow the walls of Jericho to stand, if you were surrounding it in complete armour.... You do not remain long enough in the company of the Lord to get impressed with it, and morally transformed, or common society would be intolerably irksome and unpalatable to you. You must learn to live in heaven, and only to be here for the one object of pleasing Him. As we know the holiness and purity of Christ’s company, the trifling of our worldly relatives becomes more and more irksome to us. You must learn to be in your family like a diver in a diving-bell, and then with what joy you will return to your associations above, because you have been so dependent on Him who is there, while in the depths down here, and in an element quite incongruous to you.

^[p. 331] Now you are only a frog, able to live in both elements. You lose weight by not being wholly a landsman. You know the gain of being on land, but, like the frog, you can jump into the water without any loss when it becomes convenient to do so. I want you to fear the water, and only to see a way through it into divine territory. I can propose nothing for you, but to be more with the Lord; this will so calm and influence you that you will act rightly and separately when you mix with your family, and you will go into their company prepared like a diver, drawing all your resources and sustainment from above, and nothing from what is around you.