Quiet Talks on Following the Christ Part 6

The other two groups make up the shuttle threads, running crosswise, being woven into the warp. The experiences of suffering and sacrifice are the dark threads, the gray threads, sometimes quite black, and the red threads, blood red. The experiences of gladness and glory are the bright threads, yellow, golden, sunny threads.

And the daily round of life, the decisions, the actual step after step in living out the decisions, the patient steady pus.h.i.+ng on, is the beam that with sharp blow pushes each thread into its place in the fabric being woven.

As we allow the same Spirit that swayed our Lord's life to control us, He will work out in us certain of these same experiences. And the enmity aroused, and working against that Spirit's presence and control, will bring certain other experiences. Our part will be simple obedience, listening, looking, studying quietness so as to insure keener ears and eyes--it's the quiet spirit that hears what He is saying--then obeying, using all the strength of will, and all the grace at our disposal, simply to hold steady and true, and to obey, no matter what threatens to come, or what actually does come. This will be found to be like weaving.

Probably you have often heard of how the weavers work in the famous Gobelin tapestry factories in Paris. They know nothing of the beauty of the pattern being woven. They work on the "wrong" side, the under side of the web. They miss the inspiration of seeing the rare beauty they themselves are making. All the weaver sees is the apparent tangle of many coloured threads and thread ends, while he thrusts in his needles according to the card of instructions. The more faithfully and skilfully he can follow the directions the better a piece of weaving work is done.

We simply obey. We use all the strength we have, and the skill we can acquire, in obeying. We are not to depend on what we can see or feel for inspiration, only on the Master Looms-man; on His word, written, and spoken in our hearts, and on His answering peace within. Obedience is the one key-note for all the music. Surrender is the first act of full obedience. Obedience is the habitual surrender. Our part is to hear right and do what He bids.

Some day we shall be fairly swept off our feet by the beauty of the pattern He has been weaving--_if_ we've let Him have His way at the loom.

2. The Main Road--Experiences of Power And Privilege

The Bethlehem Birth.

There were four of these experiences in our Lord's life. At the very beginning came _the Bethlehem Birth_. That meant for Him a birth out of the usual course of nature, yet working within nature's usual processes.

It was something more-than-the-natural coming down into the natural. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon the pure gentle maiden of Nazareth and a new human life was begotten by Him within her, and in due course came to the maturity of birth. This was a distinctive thing with Jesus.

Now, in quite a different sense, but in a very real sense, there will be for us, too, a Bethlehem Birth. The Holy Spirit will come in and begin a new life within us. This is the only beginning of the "Follow Me" life for any of us. There's a something on the Spirit's part before there can be a beginning on my part. Yet that hardly tells the whole story. My part is really first; I open the door for Him to come in. When I accept Jesus as my Saviour, that's opening the door. The Spirit comes in and begins the new life within me. And yet there's another first before that first act of mine. He woos me with His patient, tender love. That is the first first.

Then I open the door: at once He comes in, and does the thing which only He can do. So begins the "Follow Me" life. This is the real, the only beginning.

And yet there's more here of the practical sort than we have thought of, most of us. It means that there is within us a life higher than the natural life, and this higher life is to _be_ higher, it is to be the _controlling_ life. It is to hold the upper hand over the natural life.

The control is to be from above. That is to say, the motives and desires of the upper life are to be dominant in my daily round. It is the Father-pleasing life as contrasted with the natural life, of which we talked a while ago. Wherever the two come in conflict, the upper is to rule.

Now, I know this rather runs across the grain of a good deal of our so-called Christian life. There are a good many people who, let us really believe, have been "born again," to use the familiar phrase, yet they seem to have stayed in the being-born stage, the infancy stage. That which was "born again" in them seems not to have been developed. It has never been allowed to grow. The under life has been given the upper hand, and the upper life kept strictly down. The salt isn't salty. The common round of life is seasoned wholly by the old seasoning.

Our Lord's "Follow Me" becomes a radical, decisive thing at the very start. It means that we will allow this new life of the Spirit to grow into l.u.s.ty vigour, and to become the controlling life So it will be the chief thing. All the life shall be directed and controlled _from above._ This is a result that will come of itself if we really follow. Obedience, and back of that the quiet time on the knees with the Book, will give food and air and growing s.p.a.ce to this new life, and its growth will crowd down the other.

The Jordan Baptism of Power.

Then there was a _Jordan Baptism of Power_ in our Lord's life. This stood at the beginning of His leaders.h.i.+p, His life-work, His service among men.

As He came up out of the Jordan waters He stood waiting in prayer. He was expecting something. His whole being was absorbed in the expectancy of what had been promised.[55] And that expectancy was not disappointed. None that wait on G.o.d shall be put to confusion by any disappointment.[56] The blue above was rift through, the Holy Spirit as a gentle dove came, and remained upon Him, and the Father's voice of pleased approval spoke to His grateful, obedient heart. From that time the whole control of His life was absolutely in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

This does not mean an inert pa.s.sivity on Jesus' part; it meant a strong, intelligent yielding to the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that His natural faculties of mind and will and heart were held down, not to be used. It means that they were actively, studiously used in discerning the Holy Spirit's leading, and in doing as He directed. And it means that so there came a fulness of life, an increasing life, into His faculties, mind and will and heart. Our Lord Jesus used all His powers in yielding to the inspiration and direction and control of the Holy Spirit, keeping ever open to His suggestion, and making that suggestion the law of His own action.

And the Spirit of Omnipotence, working with the gentleness of a dove, breathed upon those yielded powers, and breathed through them, even as had been planned with the first breathing of this sort, in Eden. So from the Wilderness clear up to the last Olivet command to the disciples, everything was done at the bidding, the direction of this Spirit. And so the almighty power was breathed into every word and action and bit of suffering. The one key-note of the Master's action was obedience; the result was the flooding of the Spirit's omnipotence through His obedient faculties and life.

Now, _as we follow_, this same sort of experience will be ours. What a tremendous thing to say! Yet the road was being beaten down for _our feet_. The Son of Man was simply showing to His brother-men the road we were all meant to go, showing it by going in it. All the power that came into Jesus' life will come into ours, _if_ He is given His way. For the Holy Spirit is not measured out, either to Him or to us,[57] but poured out without stint.[58] As we follow we shall be led along behind the Man going before.

There will need to be instruction, for we're so new to this road. And human teachers are sent by the Holy Spirit to help us understand, teachers in print, and teachers in shoes. There will need to be the initial act of full surrender to the Lord Jesus as Lord indeed, for most of us have been going another way than this. There will need to be a house-cleaning time, for we have let in so much of another sort.

A soft, but very honest, searching light will come flooding in through the sky-light windows. And as we instinctively go to our knees and faces because of what that light brings to light, there will be a wondrous cleansing, both by blood and by fire. Then will come a filling of our very being by this wondrous Spirit of G.o.d.

How shall we know this filling, do you ask? There will be a quiet, deep peace, at times a great joy that sings, but ever the deep peace that _holds_ you, a new hunger for the old Book, and a new soft light on its pages. There will be an inner drawing to talk with G.o.d, and an intense desire to please Him, to find out what He wants you to do, and then to do it.

There will come other things too, of a less pleasant sort, temptation will come anew, and a sense--sometimes very acute--of sin, a feeling that there's a something within you fighting you, the new you. There will be an increased sensitiveness to sin, and an intense hatred of it. This is what the filling means. These things will tell you that He, the Spirit, has taken possession of what you surrendered, and that He is now at work within. These are His finger-prints.

Then there will be the outflowing side of this filling. A pa.s.sion that all men may know this compa.s.sionate G.o.d, will come as a fire burning in your bones. Its flames will envelop and go through everything you are and have and can do. But under all will be the pa.s.sion for pleasing the Lord Jesus.

Obedience will become the chief thing, holding everything else in check, obedience to Him, pleasing Him, doing His will.

The Bethlehem Birth is the _beginning_ of a new, a supernatural life within; _this_ will be the actual life itself, in full vigour and power.

That is the supernatural birth, this the supernatural life. That is, there is at work within you, very quietly and simply, a power more than the natural, working through the natural order, and sometimes upsetting what we may have grown to think of as the natural order. This is the Jordan Baptism of Power, the Holy Spirit taking charge, and you living a Spirit-controlled life. There's a new sign hung out over your life, "this life is being conducted under new management." You won't say it; it won't be shouted out. It'll be louder yet. Your _life_ will be telling it continually.

Power Is in the Current.

The word to emphasize here is _control_. You will find new meanings, that you had not thought of, gradually working out of it. If the Holy Spirit had control of us as He had of--Philip, for instance. He picked Philip up out of the midst of the Samaritan crowd, where he was the human centre of things, and put him down away off here in the desert,--_strange contrast!_--and with one lone traveller, greater contrast yet![59] If He were free to pick you and me up like that, out of these surroundings, congenial and pleasant, and set us down where we had no thought of going, and never would have gone of our own choice, and we sing as we are picked up, _and_ keep on singing where we find ourselves amidst the uncongenial perhaps, the strange, the unprecedented and hard,--_if_ He were free to control like that these days, there would be a present-day Pentecost beside which the Acts-Pentecost was but the beginnings of the throbbings of power.

There are some peculiarities of this "Follow Me" road here. There comes a strangely new sense of proportion. As you follow close up behind the Man ahead, you will grow _smaller_, and He will grow _larger_. No, that's not an accurate statement; you won't _grow_ any smaller, you will only find out how small you are. He won't grow any larger, you will simply be finding out, and then finding out more, how large He is. It'll seem strange to most of us, finding out our real size, or lack of the size we always supposed we were. But it will come with a great awing, heart-subduing sense, to find how marvellous in size this great Man is; and yet He is our brother, as well as so immensely more.

You come to find out that power, that thing that used to be so much talked about, and defined, and yet chiefly wondered about, that power is a matter of position. The man close in behind the Lord Jesus doesn't need to be concerned about power. In fact he isn't concerned about it, only concerned with keeping close in touch. All the rest comes without our being concerned. It comes from him, the Man ahead. There is far more power, the very power of G.o.d, softly flowing and flooding its way in and through and out, than you are ever conscious of. Others will know more of the power than you. You are thinking about the Man ahead, keeping in touch, pleasing Him. Obedience has become a new word to you. It's the music of keeping step, keeping step with Him.

Have you noticed how much the current of the stream will do for you if you are out in a row-boat? All you need to do is to keep up enough motion to hold the boat within the sweep of the current. Then your chief task is _steering_. You're not concerned about power; only about the steering.

There's more power in the current than you can ever use. Your one concern is to keep out of the shallows and sucking side-eddies, away from snag and rock, and _in the current._ The power's in the current. Right steering brings all that power to bear on your little boat.

Now, power here is a matter of steering, so far as our part is concerned.

We steer to get into the current of our Lord Jesus' will, and, by His grace, we use all our will power in _keeping_ in that current, and out of the shallows and suction-eddies at the side. The Lord Jesus, once spit upon and crucified, now seated "far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named," and _at work on earth through His Holy Spirit_,--this Lord Jesus, _free to do as He chooses_,--this is power. _He_ is power.

Power is the Lord Jesus in action, and the action is always through some man's life. We steer so as to keep in touch. He acts through the man in touch. And the hungry, needy crowds know a something coming to them, with irresistible grateful sweep.

Living a Nazareth Life.

There was a third experience in this group. Our Lord Jesus lived _the Nazareth Life_. In actual order of time this came before the baptism of power. I have changed the order here, and named it third simply for the practical help in the change. With the Lord Jesus, the whole of the life was under the sway of the Holy Spirit from birth on, through the earliest conscious years, and all the years. With us, in actual experience, we are all free to confess that it has not been so from our Spirit-birth on.

That baptism of power at Jordan was without doubt a baptism of power for leaders.h.i.+p and service. Service and leaders.h.i.+p ever need the time of special waiting on G.o.d, and the fresh anointing by the Holy Spirit's touch, the fresh consciousness of Himself, as the only source of power in the service and leaders.h.i.+p.

In our actual experience the Holy Spirit, coming in power, has had much to do in changing our habits, ourselves, and our lives, as well as in our service. There has been so much service that has not been backed up by the life, that many have come to feel, and to feel very deeply, that the power in service must have its roots in the human side, deep down in the daily habit of life. With our Lord Jesus that Jordan experience made no difference of this sort in His life. There was nothing needing to be changed. That Nazareth life had been lived continuously under the control of the Holy Spirit.

Look a moment at that Nazareth life of His. It means simply a commonplace, treadmill round of life lived under the hallowing touch of the Father's presence. This was according to the original plan. It is G.o.d's presence recognized that hallows what is common. It is the absence of His presence, that is, the leaving of Him out, that makes common things common; that is, it makes the familiar thing and round _seem_ and _feel_ common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refres.h.i.+ng. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. G.o.d's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a G.o.d-freshened hand, and seen through a G.o.d-freshened eye.

Now Jesus lived this commonplace round of life, and lived it under the ever-freshening touch of His Father's presence. It isn't the thing you do, nor the things that surround you, that make your life, but the spirit that breathes out of you in the midst of the things. It's the _you_ in you that makes the life, regardless of surroundings. The outer things are the accidents, you, the spirit that breathes out of you,--this is the real thing.

Jesus _lived_ it. That is the tremendous fact that Nazareth stands for.

He lived what He taught, and He lived it first, and He lived it far more deeply and really than it could be taught to others. This was the basis of those few service years. Nazareth lies under the Galilean ministry. There were thirty years under the three-and-a-half-years. And the thirty years crop up into and out of the three-and-a-half. The life lived was the great fact at work, as the Man went about doing good. The hidden life of Nazareth lies open in the Galilean ministry.