WHAT IS TRUE OF ME HAS TO BE MADE TRUE *TO* ME
WHAT IS TRUE OF ME HAS TO BE MADE TRUE TO ME
We used to feel long ago, if you accept that truth you must be an altered man. Now the idea is growing that if you see the objective side, you are all right. It is to me untruthful and discreditable to be one thing and to act quite the contrary. The more I know the position in which God has set me in Christ, the more my heart, as led by the Spirit, longs to be in practical accordance with [p. 101] it. I am empowered to be what I am, but that is death to my selfishness. The song is lovely, but I cannot dance to it. The most learned church lost its first love. Love is never satisfied unless it answers to the heart of the loved one. He has made us everything to suit Himself (Ephesians 1), but down here, if we are true to Him we walk worthy of our vocation. I (as I learn His purpose which is future as to fulfilment) long to know (verse 19) the power of Christ towards us, and I do not know union until then; though I am united I do not intelligently realise what is really true of me. It is not when I know it that it is true. The power to join the Lord was not given to Peter (Matthew 14) until he walked on the water. The power is in us before we join the Lord above, but we have not Peter’s affection to leave all here for Him. I can honestly say I shrink from attempting to expound any truth unless I could say that I have tasted of its virtue. It is “out of the belly” that the rivers must flow. Could any one expound the corn of the land if he was never in the land to eat it? The manna will cease one day. No one could ever tell the difference if he did not know Christ in glory. Paul longs to know Him. I am persuaded that the increase of knowledge has not helped souls.
The Lord grant that you may be the loving Mary Magdalene, and though the two great disciples go “to their own home”, yet your joy and compensation may be in finding Him where He is. Manna is where He was; the corn of the land is where He is. Who can tell anything of His present mind but as he is in concert with Him where He is? Love values much the manna where He was, but love is never satisfied but in knowing its object where it is, and how it is at the moment; and this is communion. The Lord grant that you may be fully to His pleasure.