WEANING

WEANING

Where we feel most in this life is the place where we are afflicted as a rule; where there is most vitality in us naturally, there the blow is felt most. If we were dead where we are most alive, it would be comparatively easy for the Spirit of God to carry us on. The soul ^[p. 397] would be like a weaned child - the will would be broken. Where the strength of my nature is, where my whole heart is, there all my purposes and desires are concentrated. The Lord knows well where the greatest vitality is, and He touches that, in order that there may be an acceptance of the emptiness of everything. The things that are seen are temporal.

Many christians think that because natural affection is in itself lawful it is not wrong to be engrossed with it. This is unsound, for when I am Christ’s disciple I have hated even my own life for Him, and He surely directs and enables me to fulfil every ordinance of God in His own sweetness and truth. But I sit loose to everything because He is so absolutely mine, and I am His. I have died to the natural purpose and will with Him, but He lives in me, and now He enables me to fill all my relationships in divine power and beauty.

Poor Jacob thought to save Rachel and Joseph by a plan (Genesis 33: 2). He succeeded for a time, but eventually they were the first he lost.

The Lord grant that you may find such a resource in Christ for your heart, that He is not only a compensation to you for any loss, but that because of the deep satisfaction of heart which you have in Him, you can in some degree say, ‘I have nothing to regret nor to lose’.