THE YOKE OF LOVE

THE YOKE OF LOVE

“By the which will we are sanctified” (Hebrews 10: 10); not merely made holy, as I understand it, but devoted sacrificially to the Lord. To bow our will (alienated as it is from God through a misconception of His feeling towards us) is the great activity of the life of Christ by the Spirit within us. It is not only that power belongs to God, but God is love. Man is too much set on power and too little on love which directs and uses the power.

If we felt that it was not power merely, or mainly, but love that made a demand on us, how much more easily could we bow our wills to the will of God.

I agree with you that we ought to be ever saying, “Come” to the Lord, but I believe two processes are going on, at least with some of us: one, to wean us from the present things; the other, to enlarge our souls in the beauty and excellence of Christ.

If we liked to learn the ways and wisdom of God, it need not be a sorrowful path, though it must be a trying one to us because our nature is opposed. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ... for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11: 29, 30); but you cannot think so or find it so until you put it on, and it is here that all the restiveness of our wills is brought out. An untamed ox cannot bear the yoke to be put on him,

^[p. 513] and yet when it is on him, he finds that it is not the terrible thing he thought it, nor is the burden the grievous thing that his ignorant insubjection led him to suppose. How distinctly and deeply the Lord teaches when He undertakes to teach us anything. He will not do it superficially. His lesson must never be forgotten!

If we pitch for a season at Elim, our next stage may be at Rephidim; but though the stages thus immensely vary, yet there is but one unchanging God in each, and the heart must not murmur while that living spring of love flows perennially!