FOLLOWING THE LORD
[p. 74] FOLLOWING THE LORD
I trust with a real desire to help you a little, I am induced to review the difficulties which surround the path of a saint, ready, eager, and determined to follow the Lord wholly. If I did not regard you among the later class, I could not with any confidence expect that what I am about to set before you could reach you or address your heart with any helpful effect. The first thing I have to press on myself, and on you, is what following the Lord wholly means and involves. I believe the soul simply and wholly following the Lord, starts with Him as its life, assured that it has none other; that it is alone with Him, and that the Lord is its one object. The interests of the Lord, the saints, etc., come in as associated with the Lord; but for the heart there is an eminent, commanding, known singularity: “One Lord, and his name one”. “I am Jesus” stands out pre-eminently; the greater the circle of associations or interests belonging to Him, the more distinctly and peculiarly He stands out before the soul earnest in following Him and it cannot follow Him if it be otherwise. If I do not know, not only in my heart, but in my intelligence, that my Beloved is superior in His power and manifested beauty to all others, and this especially, whenever, or wherever He is seen, amid the dearest objects of His heart, in the circle of all His glories, or when entirely alone, then I am not true or able to follow the Lord wholly. If a mariner mistake one star for another, it is evident he does not know his guiding star, and he is not following it. The heart that knows anything of following the Lord wholly, has acquired a sense of what He is which none of His interests or concerns can rival or bear resemblance to. Like the holy anointing oil, or the holy perfume, there must not and there cannot be, successfully, an attempt to make anything like unto it.
Now this consciousness of following Him is not [p. 75] known unless there be an unclouded intimacy with Him; and this cannot be maintained, but as I know how He, by the ministry of His word, washes my feet and wipes them, separating me virtually by the power of it from the defilement here which would cause any distance between Him and me. The greater the love, the less the true heart can suffer any shade of distance or reserve to arise between it and the Lord. If there be any, the following Him must necessarily be suspended. Service for Christ may not cease, but the sense of the nearness to Him which following Him implies, is lost, because even a shade of distance or reserve necessarily distracts the true heart, which knows its own place in nearness to Him, and nothing else will really suit or satisfy it. This distance must be removed before the following Him known to the heart can be resumed. Peter can cast himself out of the ship to go to Jesus (John 21). There may be full confidence in Christ’s forgiving love where there is still a distance or reserve (as with Peter) which checks the heart and disqualifies it for the nearness which, as I have already said, following implies. I have dwelt long on this point because I think that it is here that saints first part company with the Lord. I desire much that you whom the Lord has led out of late, so Ittai-like (see 2 Samuel 15: 19 - 22), may, though youngest, help on the oldest by your simple, earnest, unequivocal following of the Lord. If you fail here you will be bewildered by the zeal and usefulness of many around you. If your heart is true to Christ, the zeal and usefulness of others will be grateful to you, so far as they subserve to Christ’s interests. May you and all others who are now following the Lord with purpose of heart, be kept from the snares all around - patient, humble, devoted, waiting on Him; and through His grace, helping and contributing strength to all His people on earth, to the joy of His heart.