TRUTH HAS NO POWER UNLESS I SUBMIT TO ITS DEMANDS
TRUTH HAS NO POWER UNLESS I SUBMIT TO ITS DEMANDS
The truth may be truly received, but it has no power over us unless we connect it with God and in faith are cast on Him about it. That is, it cannot be carried out without God. We may receive it most surely, and yet not be able to carry it out, because we are not cast on God respecting it. Now, the evidence that you are cast on God is that you fast. As you depend on God, you abnegate self. If you turn to human power you need not fast; if you turn to God you must fast. I feel that this is the reason there is so little practical expression of the truth; the need of grace with the knowledge of truth is not felt. The knowledge of the truth is rightly valued and prized, but there is all the more need of grace to remove and set aside what hinders its expression; otherwise you are a candle under a bed, or under a bushel; and if God goes on giving you truth, and there be an acceptance of it, without a corresponding breaking down of that which would obscure its light and hinder its power as the bed or the bushel, then He will in some very marked way break up the bed or remove the [p. 132] bushel Himself. If you take up your cross daily you will be able to accept death easily.
What I fear is the ready acceptance of truth without the sense of how much that truth will demand, and that the flesh must be surrendered if I am to be an impersonation of that truth. The beauty of the truth, the sweetness of it, is that which is thought of, and not the demand it will make on me naturally, the amount of displacement which it will entail. I find that the most conscientious are the slowest to accept a new truth, simply because they fear not being able to answer its demands. Of course it is all grace, and if I know grace fully I am not afraid of any truth, but then its import and demands are not overlooked by me. What I desire to promote in my own soul and in others is the sense of the responsibility I am now under, because of the light which God in His mercy has taught me, so that I am not thinking of the light, but of the imperative necessity that now rests on me to express the light, and when it is so I am cast on God, and thrown out of myself; and this is really praying and fasting; dependence, and self-denial.
I do not advocate a monastic or sanctimonious manner, but I do a subdued manner, one which evidences the cross being taken up daily. A nun is afraid to laugh or to look at anything lest she should revive her carnal likings; but the real widow, nothing could really interest in the scene from which death has severed her heart, and she accepts everything here in this qualified light. She can receive and use everything cheerfully, but a deep reserve in her heart forbids anything here to touch her heart. This is patience having reached its perfect work, and to be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.