DISCIPLINE OF THE SERVANT NO. 7

DISCIPLINE OF THE SERVANT NO. 7

I know you do not take lightly this affliction. The Lord does not like us to take an affliction lightly. A rebuke entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool. But the more you take it to heart the more you reach His “holiness”, that, so to speak, is the goal. The Father’s discipline is intended to effect the greatest gain that could possibly be acquired — even to be “partakers of His holiness”, the only time this word is used. The mere thought of reaching up or arriving at any apprehension of the separateness in which He is, is a great delight and encouragement to the heart, and it has very great practical effect. Once any of us have, in any degree, partaken of His holiness, we become correspondingly sensitive to everything contrary to or inconsistent with it. It is the superior thing which ever enables us to refuse the inferior, and this in a wonderful way works all round. We do not feel that we are doing anything. We shrink from the atmosphere, we like to be ‘encased’ in the armour of light, as the wool grows on the sheep to protect it from the winter cold. The process is a very interesting one. Your divine tastes are so advanced that the incongruities in everything here are not only apparent but their real value is disclosed. You do not feel that you are losing — though you are losing the things here — because you are so assured of the highest and greatest gain. Three great facts or events have occurred and our faithfulness is proved by the way we are affected by them. The first is, that Christ has come, has died for our sins, and has risen. Secondly, that He has gone into heaven. Thirdly, that the Holy Ghost has come down to be with us and in us. The fourth is our prospect that He is coming again. Now every believer knows something of the first — no salvation otherwise. The second and third test our faithfulness; Christ is in heaven, do we seek the things that are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God? The Holy Ghost is with us and in us; does He lead and control our hearts absolutely in this scene in the absence of our Lord? All knowledge of truth is ineffectual when we are not in correspondence with these great unconditional facts, which remain true, even though we are not true to them; but when we are, all the truth is in its place. You are a special interest to the Lord at this time. May He fulfil all His pleasure respecting you, and fit you for His own service in a scene where there can be nothing right because He has been rejected from it.