THE GIFT INDICATES THE GIVER

THE GIFT INDICATES THE GIVER

I heard from ———— this morning: he seems to have enjoyed the late meeting. What I feel is that those kind of meetings should be marked by some distinct message from the Lord through His servants. There should be a certain timidity in speaking, but this with assured confidence in the Lord that it is His message I am communicating. I do not expect anything new, but I expect the wine to be new, and that the word spoken should leave a definite impression. Very often the most interesting address to listen to leaves no mark in the heart, and very often disjointed sentences badly expressed come home to ^[p. 230] the soul with a divine sense. I think ‘gift’ is very little understood; the gift necessarily indicates something of the Giver. It is not the setting which makes the diamond, though to the unskilled eye the setting may commend the diamond. I am very thankful for the time at ————. It was every way a very happy time to me. As we are in the Spirit, we are in power, and power always severs us from the hindrance to our enjoyment before the latter comes, otherwise the enjoyment would be marred. The prodigal in grace puts off the old clothes in order to put on the new, unencumbered by the old. The thing I am severed from in the power of the Spirit may indicate or predicate the nature of the enjoyment that He is leading me into. If Paul be severed from Jerusalem, heavenly places are undistractedly before him. Every step in advance is thus marked. Human effort is at best only a wish, like a cow looking over the hedge longingly at a clover field. The Spirit causes me to enter the field of heaven, but He places the fence behind me to keep me from leaving the field, so that it keeps me in it instead of its being an obstacle to my entering it.

May you greatly prosper. It is wonderful the amount of influence which a real servant has for good according as his eye is on Christ. We were noticing at our reading this morning how the Lord was affected by the eye of the bride being set on Himself (see Song of Solomon). There is no greater warning voice to me than the Bethesda people, so good and laborious as they are in gospel work, but knowing nothing of the line of interest which occupies the heart of Christ, and which therefore should occupy the hearts of His servants. Paul was treated in the third heaven as the Lord’s most familiar friend. He was a bondsman of Christ here, and he was His most familiar friend in paradise. What else could you like to be? May you never like anything lower. The higher you get, the more .I rejoice.

Every servant knows the past of our Lord and many know of the future, but what really helps is knowing Him in the present. Mary’s order of work is little known. The witness knows His present mind, and the witness is unacknowledged by man as is He of whom he witnesses.