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In laying off your burdens, therefore, the first one you must get rid of is yourself. You must hand yourself, with your temptations, your temperament, your bodies and feelings, and all your inward and outward experiences, over into the care and keeping of God, and leave it all there. He made you, and therefore He understands you, and knows how to manage you -- and you must trust Him to do it. I have tried in every way I could think of to manage myself, and to make myself what I know I ought to be, but have always failed.
Now I give it up to You. Take entire possession of me. Work in me all the good pleasure of Your will. Mould and fashion me into such a vessel as seems good to You. I leave myself in Your hands, and I believe You will, according to Your promise, make me into a vessel unto Your own honour, 'sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work. Next, you must lay off every other burden -- your health, your reputation, your Christian work, your house, your children, your business; everything, in short, that concerns you, whether inward or outward.
It is generally much less difficult for us to commit the keeping of our future to the Lord, than it is to commit our present. We know we are helpless as regards the future, but we feel as if the present was in our own hands, and must be carried on our own shoulders. Most of us have an unconfessed idea that it is a great deal to ask the Lord to carry ourselves, and that we cannot think of asking Him to carry our burdens too.
I knew a Christian lady who had a very heavy burden. It took away her sleep and her appetite, and there was danger of her health breaking down under it. Attracted by the title, she picked it up and began to read it, little knowing, however, that it was to create a revolution in her whole experience. The story was of a poor woman who had been carried triumphantly through a life of unusual sorrow.
We must take our troubles to the Lord. But I take mine, and I leave them with Him, and come away and forget them. If the worry comes back, I take it to Him again. And I do this over and over, until at last I just forget I have any worries, and am at perfect rest.
My friend was very much struck with this plan, and resolved to try it. The circumstances of her life she could not alter, but she took them to the Lord, and handed them over into His management.
Then she believed that He took them, and she left all the responsibility and the worry and anxiety with Him. As often as the anxieties returned, she took them back. The result was that although the circumstances remained unchanged, her soul was kept in perfect peace in the midst of them. She felt that she had found out a practical secret; and from that time she sought never to carry her own burdens, nor to manage her own affairs, but to hand them over, as fast as they arose, to the Divine Burden-bearer.
This same secret, also, which she had found to be so effectual in her outward life, proved to be still more effectual in her inward life, which was in truth even more utterly unmanageable. She abandoned her whole self to the Lord, with all that she was and all that she had. Believing that He took that which she had committed to Him, she ceased to fret and worry, and her life became all sunshine in the gladness of belonging to Him.
There are many other things to be said about this life hid with Christ in God, many details as to what the Lord Jesus does for those who thus abandon themselves to Him. But the gist of the whole matter is here stated: and the soul that has discovered this secret of simple faith, has found the key that will unlock the whole treasure house of God.
I am sure these pages will fall into the hands of some child of God who is hungering for just such a life as I have been describing. You long unspeakably to get rid of your weary burdens.
You would be delighted to hand over the management of your unmanageable self into the hands of one who is able to manage you. You are tired and weary, and the rest I speak of looks unutterably sweet to you. Do you recollect the delicious sense of rest with which you have sometimes gone to bed at night, after a day of great exertion and weariness?
How delightful was the sensation of relaxing every muscle, and letting your body go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort! The strain of the day had ceased, for a few hours at least, and the work of the day had been laid off. You no longer had to hold up an aching head or a weary back. You trusted yourself to the bed in an absolute confidence, and it held you up, without effort or strain, or even thought, on your part.
You rested! But suppose you had doubted the strength or the stability of your bed, and had dreaded each moment to find it giving way beneath you and landing you on the floor. Could you have rested then? Would not every muscle have been strained in a fruitless effort to hold yourself up, and would not the weariness have been greater than if you had not gone to bed at all? Let this analogy teach you what it means to rest in the Lord.
Let your soul lie down upon the couch of His sweet will, as your body lie down in your bed at night. Relax every strain, and lay off every burden. Let yourself go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort, sure that, since He holds you up, you are perfectly safe. Your part is simply to rest. His part is to sustain you -- and He cannot fail. Or take another analogy, which our Lord Himself has abundantly sanctioned: that of the child-life.
Now, what are the characteristics of a little child, and how does it live? It lives by faith, and its chief characteristic is freedom from care. It trusts its parents, it trusts its caretakers, it trusts its teachers; it even trusts people sometimes who are utterly unworthy of trust, out of the abounding trustfulness of its nature.
And this trust is abundantly answered. The child provides nothing for itself, and yet everything is provided. It takes no thought for the morrow, and forms no plans, and yet all its life is planned out for it, and it finds its paths made ready, opening out as it comes to them day by day and hour by hour. Pestilence may walk through the streets of its city, but the child regards it not. I was visiting once in a wealthy home where there was a little adopted child upon whom was lavished all the love and tenderness and care that human hearts could bestow, or human means procure.
As I watched that child running in and out day by day, free and light-hearted with the happy carelessness of childhood, I thought what a picture it was of our wonderful position as children in the house of our Heavenly Father. I said to myself, If nothing would so grieve and wound the loving hearts around her, as to see this little child beginning to be worried or anxious about herself in any way -- about whether her food and clothes would be provided, or how she was to get her education or her future support -- how much more must the great, loving heart of our God and Father be grieved and wounded at seeing His children taking so much anxious care and thought!
And I understood why it was that our Lord had said to us so emphatically, "Take no thought for yourselves" Matthew Who is the best cared for in every household? Is it not the little children? And does not the least of all, the helpless baby, receive the largest share? We all know that the baby toils not, neither does it spin; and yet it is fed, and clothed, and loved, and rejoiced in more tenderly than the hardest worker of them all.
This life of faith, then, about which I am writing, consists in just this -- being a child in the Father's house. And when this is said, enough is said to transform every weary, burdened life into one of blessedness and rest. See Philippians This is the Divine description of the life of faith about which I am writing. It is no speculative theory, neither is it a dream of romance.
Childlike trust in God is the key to its attainment. Having sought to settle the question as to the scripturalness of an actual living of this life hid with Christ in God, and having also shown a little of what it is, the next point is as to how it is to be reached and realised. I would say, first of all, that this blessed life must not be looked upon in any sense as an attainment, but as an obtainment. We cannot earn it, we cannot climb up to it, we cannot win it.
We can do nothing but ask for it and receive it. It is the gift of God in Christ Jesus. And where a thing is a gift, the only course left for the receiver is to take it and thank the giver. And everything in our salvation is a gift. From beginning to end, God is the giver and we are the receivers.
This will simplify the matter exceedingly; and the only thing left to be considered then, will be to discover upon whom God bestows this gift, and how they are to receive it. To this I would answer, in short, that He can bestow it only upon the fully consecrated soul, and that it is to be received by faith.
Consecration is the first thing -- not in any legal sense, not in order to purchase or deserve the blessing, but to remove the difficulties out of the way and make it possible for God to bestow it. In order for a lump of clay to be made into a beautiful vessel, it must be entirely abandoned to the potter, and must lie passive in his hands. And similarly, in order for a soul to be made into a vessel unto God's honour, "sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work" 2 Timothy , it must be utterly abandoned to Him, and must lie passive in His hands.
This is obvious at the first glance. I was once trying to explain to a physician who had charge of a large hospital, the necessity and meaning of consecration, but he seemed unable to understand. I would soon leave such a man as that to his own care. And I will do it. God shall have His own way with me from henceforth. To some minds perhaps the word "abandonment" might express this idea better than the word "consecration. We mean that the language of our hearts, under all circumstances and in view of every act, is to be, "Thy will be done.
We mean a life of inevitable obedience. To a soul ignorant of God, this may look hard; but to those who know Him, it is the happiest and most restful of lives.
He is our Father, and He loves us, and He knows just what is best, and therefore, of course, His will is the very most blessed thing that can come to us under any circumstances. I do not understand how it is that the eyes of so many Christians have been blinded to this fact.
But it really would seem as if God's own children were more afraid of His will than of anything else in life -- His lovely, lovable will, which only means loving-kindnesses and tender mercies, and blessings unspeakable to their souls!
I wish I could only show to every one the unfathomable sweetness of the will of God. Heaven is a place of infinite bliss because His will is perfectly done there, and our lives share in this bliss just in proportion as His will is perfectly done in them.
He loves us -- loves us, I say -- and the will of love is always blessing for its loved one. Some of us know what it is to love, and we know that could we only have our way, our beloved ones would be overwhelmed with blessings. All that is good and sweet and lovely in life would be poured out upon them from our lavish hands, had we but the power to carry out our will for them.
And if this is the way of love with us, how much more must it be so with our God, who is love itself! If we could for one moment get a glimpse into the mighty depths of His love, our hearts would spring out to meet His will and embrace it as our richest treasure; and we would abandon ourselves to it with an enthusiasm of gratitude and joy, that such a wondrous privilege could be ours.
A great many Christians seem to think that all their Father in heaven wants is a chance to make them miserable and to take away all their blessings. They imagine, poor souls, that if they hold on to things in their own will, they can hinder Him from doing this.
I am ashamed to write the words, yet we must face a fact which is making wretched hundreds of lives. She was the mother of an only boy who was the heir to a great fortune, and the idol of her heart. I am always going to obey you, and I want you to do just whatever you think best with me. I will trust your love. I will take away all his pleasures, and fill his life with every hard and disagreeable thing I can find.
I will compel him to do just the things that are the most difficult for him to do, and will give him all sorts of impossible commands. You know I would hug him to my heart and cover him with kisses, and would hasten to fill his life with all that was sweetest and best.
Better and sweeter than health, or friends, or money, or fame, or ease, or prosperity, is the adorable will of our God. It gilds the darkest hours with a divine halo, and sheds brightest sunshine on the gloomiest paths. He always reigns who has made it his kingdom, and nothing can go amiss to him. Surely, then, it is only a glorious privilege that is opening before you, when I tell you that the first step you must take in order to enter into the life hid with Christ in God, is that of entire consecration.
I beg of you not to look at it as a hard and stern demand. You must do it gladly, thankfully, enthusiastically. You must go in on what I call the privilege side of consecration. I can assure you, from the universal testimony of all who have tried it, that you will find it the happiest place you have ever entered yet. Faith is the next thing after surrender. Faith is an absolutely necessary element in the reception of any gift.
If we let our friends give a thing to us ever so fully, it is not really ours until we believe it has been given, and claim it as our own. Above all, this is true in gifts which are purely mental or spiritual. Love may be lavished upon us by another without stint or measure, but until we believe that we are loved, it never really becomes ours. I suppose most Christians understand this principle in reference to the matter of their forgiveness.
They know that the forgiveness of sins through Jesus might have been preached to them forever, but it would never really have become theirs until they believed this preaching, and claimed the forgiveness as their own. But when it comes to living the Christian life, they lose sight of this principle, and think that having been saved by faith they are now to live by works and efforts. Instead of continuing to receive, they are now to begin to do. This makes our declaration that the life hid with Christ in God is to be entered by faith, seem perfectly unintelligible to them.
We received Him by faith, and by faith alone. Therefore we are to walk in Him by faith, and by faith alone. And the faith by which we enter into this hidden life is just the same as the faith by which we were translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son -- only it lays hold of a different thing. Then we believed that Jesus was our Saviour from the guilt of sin, and according to our faith it was unto us. Now we must believe that He is our Saviour from the power of sin, and according to our faith it shall be unto us.
Then we trusted Him for forgiveness, and it became ours. Now we must trust Him for righteousness, and it shall become ours also.
Then we took Him as a Saviour in the future from the penalties of our sins. Now we must take Him as a Saviour in the present from the bondage of our sins. Then He was our Redeemer. Now He is to be our Life. Then He lifted us out of the pit.
Now He is to seat us in heavenly places with Himself. I mean all this, of course, from experience and practically. Theologically and judicially I know that every believer has everything as soon as he is converted; but from experience nothing is his until by faith he claims it. But this faith of which I am speaking, must be a present faith. No faith that is exercised in the future tense amounts to anything. A man may believe forever that his sins will be forgiven at some future time, and he will never find peace.
Similarly, no faith that looks for a future deliverance from the power of sin, will ever lead a soul into the life we are describing. The enemy delights in this future faith, for he knows it is powerless to accomplish any practical results. But he trembles and flees when the soul of the believer dares to claim a present deliverance, and to reckon itself now to be free from his power. Perhaps no four words in the language have more meaning in them than the following, which I would have you repeat over and over with your voice and with your soul, emphasizing each time a different word:.
Jesus saves me now -- It is His work to save. Jesus saves me now -- I am the one to be saved. Jesus saves me now -- He is doing it every moment. To sum up, then. In order to enter into this blessed interior life of rest and triumph, you have two steps to take.
First, entire abandonment; and second, absolute faith. No matter what may be the complications of your personal experience, no matter what your difficulties, or your surroundings, or your particular temperament, these two steps, definitely taken and unwaveringly persevered in, will certainly bring you out sooner or later into the green pastures and still waters of this life hid with Christ in God.
You may be perfectly sure of this. And if you will let every other consideration go, and simply devote your attention to these two points, and be very clear and definite about them, your progress will be rapid, and your soul will reach its desired haven far sooner than you can now think possible. Shall I repeat the steps, so that there may be no mistake?
You are a child of God, and long to please Him. You love your divine Master, and are sick and weary of the sin that grieves Him. You long to be delivered from its power. Everything you have hitherto tried has failed to deliver you. Now, in your despair, you are asking if it can indeed be, as these happy people say, that Jesus is able and willing to deliver you. Surely you must know in your very soul that He is -- that to save you out of the hand of all your enemies is, in fact, just the very thing He came to do.
Then trust Him. Commit your case to Him without any reservations, and believe that He undertakes it. Now, knowing what He is and what He has said, claim that He does even now save you. Just as you believed at first that He delivered you from the guilt of sin because He said it, so now believe that He delivers you from the power of sin because He says it.
Let your faith now lay hold of a new power in Christ. You have trusted Him as your dying Saviour; now trust Him as your living Saviour. Just as much as He came to deliver you from future punishment, He also came to deliver you from present bondage. Just as truly as He came to bear your stripes for you, has He come to live your life for you. You are as utterly powerless in the one case as in the other.
You could as easily have got yourself rid of your own sins, as you could now accomplish for yourself practical righteousness. Christ, and Christ only, must do both for you. Your part in both cases is simply to give the thing to Him to do, and then believe that He does it. I wish you would just do it out loud, so that I may see how you do it. I believe You died to set me free, not only in the future, but now and here.
I believe You are stronger than sin, and that You can keep me, even me, in my extreme of weakness, from falling into its snares or yielding obedience to its commands. And, Lord, I am going to trust You to keep me. I have tried keeping myself, and have failed, and failed most grievously. I am absolutely helpless. So now I will trust You. I give myself to You. I keep back no reserves. Body, soul, and spirit, I present myself to You as a piece of clay, to be fashioned into anything Your love and Your wisdom shall choose.
And now I am Yours. I believe You accept that which I present to You. I believe that this poor, weak, foolish heart has been taken possession of by You, and that You have even at this very moment begun to work in me to will and to do of Your good pleasure. I trust You utterly, and I trust You now. A man was obliged to descend into a deep well by sliding down a fixed rope which was supposed to be of ample length.
But to his dismay he came to the end of it before his feet had touched the bottom. He had not the strength to climb up again, and to let go and drop seemed to him but to be dashed to pieces in the black depths below.
He held on until his strength was utterly exhausted, and then dropped, as he thought, to his death. He fell -- just three inches -- and found himself safe on the rock bottom!
Are you afraid to take this step? Does it seem too sudden, too much like a leap in the dark? If ever you are to enter this glorious land, flowing with milk and honey, you must sooner or later step into the brimming waters, for there is no other path; and to do it now may save you months and even years of disappointment and grief.
Hear the word of the Lord:. Difficulties Concerning Consecration. It is very important that Christians should not be ignorant of the temptations that seem to stand ready to oppose every onward step of their progress heavenward. These are especially active when the soul is awakened to a hunger and thirst after righteousness, and begins to reach out after the fullness that is ours in Christ. One of the greatest of these temptations is a difficulty concerning consecration.
The seeker after holiness is told that he must consecrate himself, and he endeavours to do so. But at once he meets with a difficulty. He has done it as he thinks, and yet he finds no difference in his experience. The one chief temptation that meets the soul at this point is the same that assaults it all along the pathway, at every step of its progress; namely, the question as to feelings.
We cannot believe we are consecrated until we feel that we are. And because we do not feel that God has taken us in hand, we cannot believe that He has. As usual, we put feeling first, and faith second, and the fact last of all. It is striving against the inevitable when we seek to change this order. Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, according to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to Him, either in your heart or life.
If He shows you nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and must conclude that you have given Him all. Then recognize that it must be the fact, that when you give yourself to God He accepts you; and at once let your faith take hold of this fact. Begin to believe, and hold on to it steadfastly, that He has taken that which you have surrendered to Him. You positively must not wait to feel either that you have given yourself, or that God has taken you.
You must simply believe it, and reckon it to be the case. If you were to give an estate to a friend, you would have to give it, and he would have to receive it, by faith. An estate is not a thing that can be picked up and handed over to another. The gift of it and its reception are altogether a transaction by word and on paper, and therefore one of faith.
Now, if you give an estate one day to a friend, and then go away and wonder whether you really had given it, and whether he actually had taken it and considered it his own, and feel it necessary to go the next day and renew the gift. And if on the third day you still felt a similar uncertainty about it, and were to go and renew the gift; and on the fourth day go through a like process, and so on, day after day, for months and years -- what would your friend think, and what at last would be the condition of your own mind in reference to it?
Your friend would certainly begin to doubt whether you ever had intended to give it to him at all, and you yourself would be in such hopeless perplexity about it that you would not know whether the estate was yours or his, or whose it was.
Now, is not this very much the way in which you have been acting toward God in this matter of consecration? You have given yourself to Him over and over daily, perhaps for months, but you have invariably come away from your seasons of consecration wondering whether you really have given yourself after all, and whether He has taken you.
And because you have not felt any change, you have concluded at last, after many painful moments, that the thing has not been done. Do you know, dear believer, that this sort of perplexity will last for ever -- unless you cut it short by faith?
You must come to the point of reckoning the matter to be an accomplished and settled thing, and must leave it there, before you can possibly expect any change of feeling whatever.
The Levitical law of offerings to the Lord settles this as a primary fact, that everything which is given to Him becomes, by that very act, something holy, set apart from all other things, something that cannot without sacrilege, be put to any other uses. I can imagine an offerer, after he had deposited a gift, beginning to search his heart as to his sincerity and honesty in doing it, and coming back to the priest to say that he was afraid, after all, he had not given it rightly, or had not been perfectly sincere in giving it.
It is too late to recall the transaction now. Not only the priest, but all Israel, would have been aghast at the man, who having once given his offering should have reached out his hand to take it back. Yet, day after day, earnest-hearted Christians, with no thought of the sacrilege they are committing, are guilty in their own experience of a similar act, by giving themselves to the Lord in solemn consecration, and then, through unbelief, taking back that which they have given.
Because God is not visibly present to the eye, it is difficult to feel that a transaction with Him is real. I suppose that if when we made our acts of consecration we could actually see Him present with us, we should feel it to be a very real thing, and would realise that we had given our word to Him, and could not dare to take it back, no matter how much we might wish to do so.
Such a transaction would have to us the binding power that a spoken promise to an earthly friend always has to a man of honour. Then we shall cease to have such vague conceptions of our relations with Him, and feel the binding force of every word we say in His presence. Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but believing when we can neither see, hear, nor feel, is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith.
Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honour God by our faith. It is always he that believeth who has the witness, not he that doubteth.
But how can we doubt, since by His very command to us to present ourselves to Him a living sacrifice He has pledged Himself to receive us? I cannot conceive of an honourable man asking another to give him a thing which, after all, he was doubtful about taking, still less can I conceive of a loving parent acting so toward a beloved child. We may, nay we must , feel the utmost confidence, then, that when we surrender ourselves to the Lord, according to His own command, He does then and there receive us, and from that moment we are His.
A real transaction has taken place, which cannot be violated without dishonour on our part, and which we know will not be violated by Him. When we avouch, affirm, the Lord to be our God, and that we will walk in His ways and keep His commandments, He affirms us to be His, and that we shall keep all His commandments. And from that moment He takes possession of us. This has always been His principle of working, and it continues to be so. This is so plain as not to admit of a question.
But if the soul still feels in doubt or difficulty, let me refer you to a New Testament declaration which approaches the subject from a different side, but which settles it, I think, quite as definitely. There can be, of course, but one answer to this, for He has commanded it. Is it not also according to His will that He should work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure? This question also can have but one answer, for He has declared it to be His purpose.
You know, then, that these things are according to His will. And knowing this much, you are compelled to go further, and know that you have the petitions that you have desired of Him. That you have, I say -- not will have, or may have, but have now in actual possession. I desire to make this subject so plain and practical that no one need have any further difficulty about it, and therefore I will repeat again just what must be the acts of your soul in order to bring you out of this difficulty about consecration.
Have you trusted the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and know something of what it is to belong to the family of God, and to be made an heir of God through faith in Christ? And now do you feel springing up in your heart this longing to be conformed to the image of your Lord?
In order for this, you know there must be an entire surrender of yourself to Him, that He may work in you all the good pleasure of His will. Have you have tried over and over to do it, but hitherto without any apparent success? At this point it is that I desire to help you. What you must do now is come once more to Him, in a surrender of your whole self to His will, as complete as you know how to make it. You must ask Him to reveal to you, by His Spirit, any hidden rebellion.
If He reveals nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and that the surrender is complete. This must, then, be considered a settled matter. You have wholly yielded yourself to the Lord, and from henceforth you do not in any sense belong to yourself. You must never even so much as listen to a suggestion to the contrary.
If the temptation comes to wonder whether you really have completely surrendered yourself, meet it with an assertion that you have. Do not even argue the matter. Repel any such idea instantly, and with decision. You meant it then, you mean it now, you have really done it. Your emotions may clamour against the surrender, but your will must hold firm. It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need to attend to.
The surrender, then, having been made, never to be questioned or recalled, the next point is to believe that God takes that which you have surrendered, and to reckon that it is His. Not that it will be His at some future time, but that it is now ; and that He has begun to work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And here you must rest. You must hold steadily here. But while you trust, He works; and the result of His working always is to change you into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, by His mighty Spirit.
Do you, then, now at this moment, surrender yourself wholly to Him? You answer, Yes. Then, my dear friend, begin at once to reckon that you are His, that He has taken you, and that He is working in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.
And keep on reckoning this. I leave myself with You. Work in me all the good pleasure of Your will, and I will only lie still in Your hands and trust You. Make this a daily, definite act of your will, and many times a day return to it, as being your continual attitude before the Lord.
Confess it to yourself. Confess it to God. Confess it to your friends. Affirm the Lord to be your God, continually and unwaveringly, and declare your purpose of walking in His ways and keeping His statutes.
What thou hast done and doest, thou knowest well;. I will whirl patient, though my brain should reel;. Bosley, Harold A. Smith, Hannah S. MacGillivray Catechisms lknefits of Christianity , Dr. Richard Philosophy of plan of Salvation, Dr.
Hayes Bible History, Mrs. Macartee Christian ' s Secret of a Happy Life , Author : Hans J. From Smith«spen came The Christian's Secret ofthe Happy Life , theclassic, enduring statement of the simple piety thatwasthe
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