Union With Christ # 48

7. Consummated Union (continued)

Now let us note that this is not only a future prospect. We could get excited about our visions and our dreams, our illustrations - as they might be. We could have these wonderful ideas and conceptions, simply because they constitute the Christian faith. Christians believe such things as these. These are the things which go to make up what is called the religion of Christianity. But it is not just that. Oh, no: Christianity is, being different from all other religions, subject to experiment. It allows of being put to the test, and it stands up to the test and bears present evidence of its full reality. The hopes and expectations and anticipations of Christians are not just and only lying in the future. In the day in which you and I become, or in which
any man or woman becomes, joined to the Lord, in a definite act, there is instantly an evidence of the ultimate glory.

Your experience and history may bear that out - so much so, that you find yourself looking back to those days, to the beginning, almost with longing eyes, with a wistful heart. There are people who sing, and who sing quite in accordance with their spirit: -

"Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?"

"Return, O holy Dove, return
Sweet messenger of rest!"

They go on,

"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee."

Yes, many have come to have to sing like that; but whether you sing like that or not, whether that is true or not - and it ought not to be true of Christians - there is always a looking back to those days. For many of us it is like that. I remember her so clearly my own first days and months, when the Lord got a full, clear, free way in my heart and life; they were wonderful. Not that they have not been wonderful since! But what happened? Why, we just had a taste of glory! The evidence was born there and then that we were made for glory: our coming into the new creation in Christ Jesus is at once sealed and stamped with the destiny of the new creation - glory. God's new beginnings are always with glory.

But this is not only at the beginning - it happens repeatedly in the course of the Christian life. Sadly enough, we do not just go straight on without some tumbles, falls, blunders, sinning, slipping up, making grievous and sad mistakes in our Christian life, and when we do it the enemy is not slow to rush in and seek to put us right out altogether. We begin to feel very sad and very sorry for ourselves, and down we go; our spirits droop, and we get locked up with this thing. The glory has gone, and we think it is never going to come back again. But then somehow the Lord says something to us, He speaks to us again His word of reassurance, and the thing is put right; we lay hold in faith again, and the glory comes back. The Lord has not forsaken us, the destiny is not lost - it comes back again.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 49)