The Deeper Christian Life # 4

The Deeper Christian Life # 4

3. The Cause of This Discrepancy Between God's Gifts, and our Low Experience

The believer is complaining that God has never given him a kid. Or, God has given him some blessing but has never given the full blessing. He has never filled him with His Spirit. "I never," he says, "had my heart, as a fountain, giving forth the rivers of living waters promised in John 7:38." What is the cause? The elder son thought he was serving his father faithfully "these many years" in his father's house, but it was in the spirit of bondage and not in the spirit of a child, so that his unbelief blinded him to the conception of a father's love and kindness, and he was unable all the time to see that his father was ready, not only to give him a kid, but a hundred, or a thousand kids, if he would have them. He was simply living in unbelief, in ignorance, in blindness, robbing himself of the privileges that the father had for him. So, if there be a discrepancy between our life and the fulfillment and enjoyment of all God's promises, the fault is ours. If our experience be not what God wants it to be, it is because of our unbelief in the love of God, in the power of God, and in the reality of God's promises. God's word teaches us, in the story of the Israelites, that it was unbelief on their part that was the cause of their troubles, and not any limitation or restriction on God's part. As Psalm 78 says: - "He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused the waters to run down like rivers." Yet they sinned by doubting His power to provide meat for them - " They spake against God; they said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" (vs. 15-19). Later on, we read in v. 41, "They turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel." They kept distrusting Him from time to time. When they got to Kadesh-Barnea, and God told them to enter the land flowing with milk and honey where there would be rest, abundance, and victory, only two men said, "Yes, we can take possession, for God can make them conquerors." But the ten spies, and the six hundred thousand men answered, "No, we can never take the land, the enemies are too strong for us." It was simply unbelief that kept them out of the land of promise. If there is to be any deepening of the spiritual life in us, we must come to the discovery, and the acknowledgement of the unbelief there is in our hearts. God grant that we may get this spiritual quickening and that we may come to see that it is by our unbelief that we have prevented God from doing His work in us. Unbelief is the mother of disobedience, and of all my sins and short comings - my temper, my guide, my unlovingness, my worldliness, my sins of every kind. Though these differ in nature and form, yet they all come from the one root, viz., that we do not believe in the freedom and fullness of the Divine gift of the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and strengthen us, and fill us with the life and grace of God all the day long. Look, I pray you, at the elder son, and ask what was the cause of that terrible difference between the heart of the father and the experience of the son. There can be no answer but that it was this sinful unbelief that utterly blinded the son to a sense of his father's love.

Dear fellow- believer, I want to say to you that if you are not living in the joy of God's salvation, the entire cause is your unbelief. You do not believe in the mighty power of God, and that He is willing by His Holy Spirit to work a thorough change in your life, and enable you to live in fullness of consecration to Him. God is willing that you should so live; but you do not believe it. If men really believed in the infinite love of God, what a change it would bring about! What is love? It is a desire to communicate oneself for the good of the object loved - the opposite to selfishness, as we read in 1 Cor. 14, "love seeketh not her own." Thus the mother is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of her child. So God in His love is ever willing to impart blessing; and He is omnipotent in His love. This is true, my friends; God is omnipotent in love, and He is doing His utmost to fill every heart in this house. "But if God is really anxious to do that, and if He is Almighty, why does He not do it now?" You must remember, that God has given you a will, and by the exercise of that will, you can hinder God, and remain content, like the elder son, with the low life of unbelief. Come, now, and let us see the cause of the difference between God's high, blessed provision for His children, and the low, sad experience of many of us in the unbelief that distrusts and grieves Him.

4. The Way of Restoration - How is that to be Brought About?

We all know the parable of the prodigal son, and how many sermons have been preached about repentance, from that parable. We are told that "he came to himself and said, I will arise and go to my father; and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight." In preaching, we speak of this as the first step in a changed life - as conversion, as repentance, confession, returning to God. But as is the first step for the prodigal, we must remember that this is also the step to be taken by His erring children - by all the ninety-nine "who need no repentance," or think they do not. Those Christians who do not understand how wrong their low religious life is, must be taught that this is sin - unbelief; and that it is as necessary that they should be brought to repentance as the prodigal! You have heard a great deal of preaching repentance to the unconverted; but I want to try to preach it to God's children. We have a picture of so many of God's children in that elder brother. What the father told him, to bring about a consideration of the love that He bore him, just as he loved the prodigal brother, thus does God tell to us in our contentedness with a such a low life - "You must repent and believe that I love you, and all that I have is thine." He says, "By your unbelief, you have dishonored Me, living for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and never believing what it was to live in the blessedness of My love. You must confess the wrong you have done Me in this, and be broken down in contrition of heart just as truly as the prodigal."

There are many children of God who need to confess, that though they are His children, they have never believed that God's promises are true, that He is willing to fill their hearts all the day long with His blessed presence. Have you believed this? If you have not, all our teaching will be of no profit to you. Will you not say, "By the help of God, I will begin now a life of faith, and will not rest until I know what such a life means. I will believe that I am every moment in the Father's presence, and all that He has is mine?"

May the Lord God work this conviction in the hearts of all cold believers. Have you ever heard the expression, "a conviction for sanctification?" You know, the unconverted man needs conviction before conversion. So does the dark-minded Christian need conviction before, and in order to sanctification, before he comes to a real insight to spiritual blessedness. He must be convicted a second time because of his sinful life of doubt, and temper, and unlovingness. He must be broken down under that conviction, then there is hope for him. May the Father of mercy grant "all such that deep contrition, so that they may be led into the blessedness of His presence, and enjoy the fullness of His power and love!

~Andrew Murray~

(continued with # 5)