How to Live a Holy Life Part 6

Unless we have faith to know that G.o.d is our keeper and that hence we have nothing to fear, we shall never be the cheer and sunlight in this dark world that G.o.d designed us to be. This is a world of trouble. Sin envelops many souls in awful midnight gloom. Some may never find Jesus unless they see him smiling in your face. You as G.o.d's dear child are to be a light to those poor, benighted souls. To be such a light, you must be full of light, and to be full of light you must be full of hope by faith in the cheering and encouraging promises of G.o.d. None can be truly happy, none can be the cheer, comfort, and consolation to the world, who are bearing their own burdens. Only those who have learned the sweet lesson of trust in G.o.d and know that he cares for them are truly happy and free and capable of cheering others.

He who this one short life would live As heaven has designed Must scatter rays of cheering light From a heart with Hope enshrined.

There are many priceless promises in the Word of G.o.d. There is a promise for every need, condition, and circ.u.mstance of life. Among these blessed promises, here is one that has brought comfort to many a weary pilgrim on life's way: "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." 1 Pet. 5:7. If this promise does not lift you far above all the trials, discouragements, and weariness of life, it is because you do not believe it nor understand the fulness of its meaning. "He careth for you."

It is not your neighbor or your friend, but it is you. Cares will come to you, certainly; you could never cast your cares upon G.o.d if you had none.

But you have them and doubtless many of them. The difficulty with many is, they do not cast them on G.o.d. Reader, your life will never be, it can not be, that free, happy, radiant, sunlit, helpful life that pleases G.o.d, if you bear your own cares.

There is nothing too trivial in life to take to G.o.d. In the very smallest concerns of your daily life he has an interest. In everything let your requests be known unto him. Do learn to take everything to him. Fret over nothing, never worry for a moment. Let nothing disturb or disquiet you. I say nothing. "He careth for you." Do you comprehend the full meaning of these words? Think them over for a moment. Let go of yourself and let G.o.d keep you. Oh, the freedom that belongs to the children of G.o.d!

Theirs is a sweet land of liberty. But alas! how many will go on bearing their own burdens and weighted down with care with these words right before them: "He careth for you"! Why not let him?

Care is a grace-destroyer. If you would be strong in the grace of G.o.d, you must live free from care. It gnaws at the very vitals of the soul. A strong cable made of many fine wires was stretched across the river and was used to tow a heavy scow back and forth. One of the small strands was broken. This was thought to be a small matter. Soon another was broken and then another. Still this was not of much consequence. One by one more were broken but unheeded because each was so small. Finally all were broken, and the boat went adrift. A little care does not seem to be of much consequence. But the Bible says to be "careful for nothing," and to "cast all your care upon him."

Some have thought that the bearing of burdens and cares made us strong in the Lord. No, it is the casting of them on Jesus that makes us strong. For a man to be down under a heavy weight is no exercise to his muscles; but to be up on his feet and pa.s.sing heavy weights on to another, this is exercise. To be down under burdens and cares is no exercise to the soul, but is really death; the pa.s.sing of the cares on to Jesus is the exercise and the strength of the spiritual powers. If you only knew how much grace a little care destroyed, you would quickly cast them on Jesus. Some have come to find themselves entirely without grace because they did not cast their cares on the Lord. We knew a sister whose baby was such a care that she could not keep saved. One day when asked how she was getting along in the Lord, she answered, "Not well; the baby is such a care and worry that I can not keep the victory I should like to have." Was it not too bad to lay such a blame upon a poor little innocent child? I was asked one time if it was possible to reach an experience where we would never fret or worry. Certainly we can. We shall never get to a place where we shall have no temptations, but we can get to a place where we shall not yield to the temptations. Your life has not reached that degree of perfection that it should, until you have attained to such an experience. Jesus says, "Take no thought for the morrow." When you are having any great anxieties about future things, you are doing what Jesus tells you not to do, and you can not do something he tells you not to do without suffering spiritual loss.

Oh! why will you worry about anything, when Jesus says, "Be anxious for nothing." "But," you say, "when there is no meat in the larder and no flour in the bin, can we then be not anxious?" There are those who have been in just such circ.u.mstances and yet have not been greatly troubled.

If you will be over-anxious about anything, you can never live close to G.o.d. When anxieties knock at the door of your heart for admittance and you open the door and let them in, you are opening the door to a dangerous band of robbers. They are robbers of grace and peace. When anxieties step over the threshold of your heart's door, grace and peace fly out of the window. "But what am I to do?" sighs a care-worn soul. Do just what a good man says he did. He said that he opened his heart to Jesus, and he came in and shut the door. Let Jesus keep the door of your heart. When anxieties come and want into your heart, tell them they must get permission from Jesus, because you have given your whole heart up to him. This is what is meant by "casting your care upon him." It is not enough to kneel down and ask Jesus to take them; you must cast them upon him. In this is the soul's needed exercise. The soul that will do this shall be strong. You must put the burden over on the Lord's shoulders and let him bear it. He will bear all your burdens for you if you will lay them upon him.

Not only must you put them upon him, but you must let go entirely. You do not even need to look after them to see what he does with them. Your little child comes to you with a tangled cord. It gives it over into your hands, but holds to one end. Now, you know that in order to get the tangle out, you must have both ends. O weary one, Jesus will disentangle all the cares of life, but you must let him have both ends. He does not want your help. You hinder him if you attempt to help him. Cares will come; things that are of a trying nature will a.s.sail us as long as we live; but we have a refuge in Jesus; he will bear our burdens; he will care for us.

"CONSIDER THE LILIES."

What a beautiful lesson Jesus has taught us of rest and quietness from the lilies! "Consider the lilies of the field," he says, "how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin." He is trying to teach us how free we can be--free from all earthly cares and anxieties. The lily does not struggle; it has no anxieties about its future; but it grows. It grows to be beautiful. Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them.

G.o.d paints the flower with greater beauty than the robes of kings. If you would be beautiful, you must rest in the Lord. Just a little struggling, and you will mar the whole. Christ wants to reveal himself through you. He will shine the beauty of his own glorious person into your soul if you will but be quiet. Have no anxieties about the things that pertain to this life, and Jesus will clothe you with the beauties of heaven. Character, as the years pa.s.s on, is revealed on the face. The miser's face shows the miserly condition of his heart. Jesus will stamp his own image upon the soul if the soul is kept in quietness, and this image will stand out in beauty on the face and outward life.

By this lesson of the lilies Jesus did not mean to teach that we should not pray. He once said, "Men ought always to pray." We must pray much. If we do not pray, Satan will have us toiling and spinning. Keeping close to Jesus with a strong faith and a firm trust is the only way to rest, and we can not do this without much prayer. "Cease thy toiling and care." Learn a lesson from the lilies. Rest in the Lord, and he will make you an object of Christian beauty that will bless the world. Even after you are long gone, that restful, patient life will cast its rays of light and beauty back and chase away the shadows from the life of others.

The day has gone, the twilight fades, There's stillness everywhere; I seek some place of solitude, And humbly bow in prayer.

I tell the story of the day-- The joy, the grief, the care; I keep not back one secret thing, But tell it all in prayer.

O heart of mine, be light and free, Not lightest burden bear, In everything let thy requests Be told to G.o.d in prayer.

Yes, all; I tell it all to Christ In evening twilight dim: Somehow my heart much lighter grows Since all is told to him.

I lay my life at his dear feet-- O Jesus, I am thine!

I'll walk the way of life with thee; Thy will, O Christ, is mine.

And now I lay me down to sleep While gathering shadows fall, And sweet indeed my rest shall be, Since Jesus knows it all.

SORROWFUL YET ALWAYS REJOICING.

This world is sometimes called "the vale of tears." Jesus said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation," but he also said, "In me ye shall have peace." The way to heaven is through tribulations. Those whom John saw standing before the throne and the Lamb arrayed in white robes and with palms in their hands, were one day where we now are, and thank G.o.d, we, coming up through great tribulation, shall some day be where they are.

While man in this world will meet with sorrow, he can by the grace of G.o.d always rejoice. Alum thrown into muddy water will clarify it. The grace of G.o.d thrown into a cup of sorrow will turn it to joy. Sorrows are needful.

It is only a barren waste where there is no rainfall.

We have sung, "No days are dark to me." This can indeed be true, but it is not to be taken in the sense that there will be no clouds nor rainfall.

Show me a man who never has a cloud to float across his sky, and I will show you a man who has not faith enough to see clearly in the sunlight. It is those whose faith pierces through the cloud and keeps the smiling, sunlit face of Christ in view that have the truest, sweetest joy. Their rejoicing is in the Lord. By bravery and force of will some may shut themselves against sorrow and soon become insensible to it. But the heart that is steeled against sorrow is in all probability so calloused that it can not experience joy. Those who know the deepest sorrow may ofttimes know the fullest joy, and that in the midst of their sorrow. Do not harden your heart against sorrow, but look to Jesus for that balm which heals, that grace which sustains, that comfort which gladdens. Some have thought that true joy consists in never having a sorrow; that those who have sorrow have not found the way of peace. In this they err. Those who never have a sorrow rejoice because they have no sorrows, but some who have sorrow have learned to rejoice in the Lord. This is truest joy.

"Sorrowful," said one who was crucified with Christ, "yet always rejoicing." He never once denied having sorrow; nay, he said, "I have great heaviness, and continual sorrow in my heart." But he also said, "I glory." It was the deep sorrow that made him most like Jesus. He had feeling. "We sorrow," he said, "but not as those who have no hope." The world knows a sorrow that the Christian does not know. Christians should be careful lest in hardening themselves against feeling they do not render themselves incapable of feeling compa.s.sion, sympathy, and pity.

Let the tears flow. If you keep them back, the fountain will dry up. May the Lord pity those who have no tears! Jesus wept. The apostle Paul said, "Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears." Oh, that unfeeling heart that can not suffer, that dry heart that has no fountain of tears! It weeps not over the sorrows of others and consequently can not rejoice when others are joyful. Only those who weep can truly rejoice.

You rejoice because you and your family are in good health, because your friends are smiling upon you, because circ.u.mstances surrounding you are favorable, because you have an abundance of good things to eat and of clothing to wear. But your rejoicing is only in earthly things. We are to be grateful for these things, but they are only the sea-foam of joy; the water lies beneath. True joy is to rejoice not only in the Lord but with the Lord. Rejoice in those things in which Jesus and the angels rejoice. When your goods are being wasted, you find your deepest joy because G.o.d is being glorified.

If you can not weep with angels, you can not rejoice with them. See that aged pilgrim: his has been a hard and stony way; loved ones have gone one by one from his embrace; riches have taken wings and flown away; sorrows are multiplied; trials are many; burdens are heavy; he is footsore, sad, and weary. Angels are bending over him weeping. Can you weep with him and them? They comfort him. The sadness of his heart begins to die away; hope begins to dawn. The dawning of the hope causes the angels to rejoice. This is truest joy. Rejoice when souls are saved; rejoice when hearts are gladdened; rejoice when G.o.d is praised. This is the true source of purest joy. But it is only those who are capable of suffering deeply with the sufferings of others, that can truly rejoice when their sufferings are turned away. The more we are like Jesus, the more we have of his Spirit, the tenderer will be our hearts and the more deeply will our souls be moved by the sufferings of others.

When some dear friend has proved untrue; when some loved one has gone astray; when the death-angel has left a chair vacant at your hearth-stone and deep sorrow lies upon your soul, then it is that you feel nearer to Jesus. You feel ripe for heaven. The world has suddenly gone out, and you have cast your eyes upward. Do not try to keep back the tears; let them flow. They are pearls in angels' sight. It is the tears of the child that touches the heart of the parent, and cites him to give comfort to the little one. It is the tears of the Christian that touches the great loving heart of G.o.d and moves him to give that solace which only Heaven gives.

David said in a time of deepest sorrow--his son was seeking his life--"It may be the Lord will look on my tears [margin], and that the Lord will requite me good." Hezekiah was doomed to die. The prophet told him to 'set his house in order, for he should die, and not live.' The dying man turned his face to the wall and prayed, "I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight"; and he "wept with a great weeping [margin]." This touched the heart of G.o.d, and he said, "I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee."

If the heart of G.o.d's saints were a deeper fountain of tears, more sick people would be healed in these days. Around are the sick and suffering, but alas, how few tears! When saints have so deepened into G.o.d, cultivated such a tenderness of heart, and become so deeply compa.s.sionate, that they will "water their couch with their tears all the night" at the sight of sick persons, they will get answers to their prayers. To such G.o.d will say, "Behold, I will heal him." If tears will not reach G.o.d, the case is hopeless. Esau sought for a place of repentance and sought it with tears, but could not find it. The mentioning of tears here implies that the addition of tears to earnest heart-seeking has influence with G.o.d.

Jeremiah, in his lamentations for fallen Israel, said, "Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" He knew that if anything would avail with G.o.d, it would be tears therefore he wished that his eyes were a fountain of tears, so that G.o.d might be moved to save Israel.

"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." There can be no harvest from seed sown unless the seed is watered. As you go out to sow seed in the Master's field, water them with your tears if you would have a joyful harvest. May G.o.d save his people from unfeelingness of heart! A soul with no tears is a soul with no flowers. There is no verdure where there is no water. Those who are not deep enough in G.o.d to shed tears over a lost and ruined world are not deep enough to shed tears of joy over a soul's salvation. Out from the depth of his heart Jesus cried, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! how oft would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood under her wing, but ye would not." When did you shed tears over lost souls? Do you ever have a Gethsemane? Is your pillow ever dampened by tears shed for a doomed world? Do you ever go out beneath the starry sky and with outstretched arms cry in the severe pains of travail, "O lost souls, lost souls! how oft would I have gathered thee to Jesus, as a hen gathers her brood under her wing, but ye would not"? Only those who have deep travail of soul for the lost can fully rejoice when the lost are found.

One of the apostles said he served the "Lord with many tears." A heart from which flows no tears is not a heart that is wholly imbued by the Spirit of G.o.d. Tears of compa.s.sion for the suffering, tears of warning and entreaty for the lost, tears of joy for the saved, will flow through a perfectly holy heart as freely as water through a sieve. Sunlight perforates the block of ice from the center outward; so the love of G.o.d perforates the heart to its depths and lets the tears of affection, pity, and sympathy flow out.

Do not try to escape suffering. Do not shut your heart against sorrow. It is the bruised flower that gives out the sweetest scent. Open thy heart to G.o.d and let him bruise it, let sorrow flow in and break it, that sweetness may flow out. When the poet sang:

"I no trouble and no sorrow See today, nor will I borrow Gloomy visions for the morrow,"

he sang not of sorrow for souls lost in sin, nor of needful heaviness through manifold temptations, nor of sorrow awakened by the suffering of others, but of that sorrow which arises from the world through distrust and separation from G.o.d.

There is a sorrow which comes through Christ. It is as the refiner's fire, purifying the soul and binding it closer to G.o.d. Such sorrow detaches the heart from the world and from self, and hides it in G.o.d. It is impossible for the soul to approach any degree of nearness to Christ only through sorrow and suffering. In my own experience my heart once longed for deeper grace. My whole soul breathed out, "O Jesus! give me more meekness." For a few days a heavy cloud of sorrow lay upon me; when it had pa.s.sed away, I had an answer to my prayer.

I would have you beware of that unfeeling state in which one has no sorrow, and mistakingly attributes its absence to grace. Grace helps us bear sorrow, but does not harden our hearts against it. Sorrow brings us to a throne of grace for grace and grace brings us joy, so that we have joy in sorrow. No other joy is so sweet as this. It is the real and true joy of Christ.

GENTLENESS.

Fruit-bearing trees are used in the Scriptures to represent the race of mankind. The Savior likens the wicked to "corrupt trees," which bear evil fruit and the righteous to "good trees" which bear good fruit (Matt. 7:15, 20). He also teaches very emphatically the impossibility of one's being a good tree and yet bearing evil fruit, or of being a corrupt tree and bearing good fruit. Since the nature of the fruit we bear determines what manner of tree we are, it is very advisable that we as professing Christians should frequently examine the fruit we are bearing. To be Christ's, or to be a Christian, we must have the Spirit of Christ; for the Scriptures say that "if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Rom. 8:9). As certainly as cause produces effect, those who have the Spirit of Christ bear the fruit of the Spirit. Not to bear the fruit of the Spirit is full proof that you have not the Spirit. Then a close examination of the fruit you are bearing will reveal to you whether or not you have the Spirit of Christ, whether or not you are his, whether or not you are a Christian. You can make a superficial examination, and allow yourself to be deceived. You can make excuses for yourself because of your weaknesses, and thus deceive yourself. But a close, thorough, profound examination will disclose to each one the manner of spirit he is of.

Gentleness is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5: 22). If we have the Spirit of Christ, we bear this fruit. "Well," says one, "in my very make -up I am rough, harsh, and hasty." You need to be made anew. When G.o.d finds a man that is rough, harsh, and severe in his make-up, He will, if the man will yield to the operation of the Holy Spirit, make him mild, gentle, and peaceful. People go to a hospital and by a scientific operation have abscesses and tumors removed from the stomach and other internal parts.

G.o.d, by a blessed, wonderful, and successful operation of the Holy Spirit, will take that roughness, harshness, and severity out of your nature, and instil mildness, tenderness, softness, and gentleness instead. Harshness and roughness are a corruption that G.o.d, in his gracious plan of salvation, is pleased to remove. If you will allow the Holy Spirit to work in you that which is pleasing in G.o.d's sight, he will make you gentle.

What is gentleness? It is blandness, softness, mildness, and meekness. It is the opposite of harshness, roughness, etc. It is sweetness of disposition, mildness of temper, softness of manner, kindness, tenderness, etc. Those who are of a gentle disposition act and speak without asperity.

They are not morose, sour, crabbed, and uneven, but are smooth, mild, and even. Good manners are intimately connected with gentleness, and good manners are no dishonor to Christianity.

The apostle Paul by way of testimony said to the Thessalonian saints, "We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children." 1 Thess.