Abide
In Christ by Andrew Murray
Day
16
Forsaking
All For Him
I
have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung,
that I may win Christ, and be found In Him… (Phil. 3:8,9 KJV)
Wherever
there is life, there is a continual interchange of taking in and
giving out, receiving and restoring. The nourishment I take in is
given out again in the work I do. In the impressions I receive, I
give out in the thoughts and feelings I express. One depends upon the
other — giving out always increases the power of taking in. All the
enjoyment of life is In the healthy exercise of giving and taking.
It
is so in the spiritual life, too. There are Christians who look on
the blessedness of the spiritual life as consisting only in the
privilege of receiving. They do not know how the capacity for
receiving is only kept up and enlarged by continual giving up and
giving out — how it is only in the emptiness that comes from the
parting with what we have, that the Divine fulness can flow in. It
was a truth our Savior continually insisted upon. When He spoke of
selling all to secure the treasure, of losing our life to find it, of
the hundredfold to those who forsake all, He was expounding the need
for self-sacrifice as the law of the kingdom for Himself as well as
for His disciples. If we are really to abide in Christ, and to be
found in Him — to have our life always and wholly in Him — we
must each in our measure say with Paul, "I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,
that I may win Christ, and be found In Him."
Let
us try to see what there is to be forsaken and given up. First of
all, there is sin. There can be no true conversion without the giving
up of sin. And yet, owing to the ignorance of the young convert of
what sin really is, of what the claims of God's holiness are, and the
extent to which the power of Jesus can enable us to conquer sin, the
giving up of sin is only partial and superficial. With the growth of
the Christian life there comes a desire for a deeper and more entire
purging out of everything that is unholy. And it is especially when
the desire to abide in Christ uninterruptedly, to be always found in
Him, becomes strong, that the soul is led to see the need of a new
act of surrender, in which it accepts afresh and ratifies its death
to sin in Christ, and parts indeed with everything that is sin.
Availing himself, in the strength of God's Spirit, of that wonderful
power of our nature by which the whole of one's future life can be
gathered up and disposed of in one act of the will, the believer
yields himself to sin no more — to be only and wholly a servant of
righteousness. He does it in the joyful assurance that every sin
surrendered is gain indeed — making room for the inflowing of the
presence and the love of Christ.
Next
to the parting with unrighteousness, is the giving up of
self-righteousness. Though we contend most earnestly against our own
works or merits, it is often long before we come to really understand
what it is to refuse to give self the least place or right in the
service of God. Unconsciously, we allow the actings of our own mind,
heart, and will free scope in God's presence. In prayer and worship,
in Bible reading and working for God, instead of absolute dependence
on the Holy Spirit's leading, self is expected to do a work it never
can do. We are slow to learn the lesson, "In me, that is, in my
flesh, dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18). As we learn this lesson,
and we see how corruption extends to everything that is of nature, we
then see that there can be no entire abiding in Christ without the
giving up of all that is of self in religion. There indeed can be no
entire abiding without giving it up to the death, and waiting for the
breathings of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit alone is able to work in
us what is acceptable in God's sight.
Then,
again, there is our whole natural life, with all the powers and
endowments bestowed upon us by the Creator, with all the occupations
and interests with which Providence has surrounded us. It is not
enough that, when once you are truly converted, you have the earnest
desire to have all these natural gifts devoted to the service of the
Lord. The desire is good, but it can neither teach the way nor give
the strength to do it acceptably. Incalculable harm has been done to
the deeper spirituality of the Church, by the idea that when once we
are God's children the using of our gifts in His service follows as a
matter of course. No...for this there is indeed needed very special
grace. And the way in which the grace comes is again through that of
sacrifice and surrender. I must see how all my gifts and powers are,
even though I be a child of God, still defiled by sin, and under the
power of the flesh. I must feel that I cannot at once proceed to use
them for God's glory. I must first lay them at Christ's feet, to be
accepted and cleansed by Him. I must feel myself utterly powerless to
use them correctly. I must see that they are most dangerous to me,
because through them the flesh - the old nature - self - will so
easily exert its power. In this conviction I must part with them,
giving them entirely up to the Lord. When He has accepted them, and
set His stamp upon them, I receive them back, to hold them as His
property, to wait on Him for the grace to daily use them aright, and
to have them act only under His influence.
And
so experience proves it true here too, that the path of entire
consecration is the path of full salvation. Not only is what is thus
given up received back again to become doubly our own, but the
forsaking of all is followed by the receiving of all. We abide in
Christ more fully as we forsake all and follow Him. As I count all
things loss for His sake, I am found In Him. The same principle holds
good for all the lawful occupations and possessions with which God
entrusts us. Such were the fishnets on the Sea of Galilee, and the
household duties of Martha of Bethany — the home and the friends of
many of Jesus' disciples. Jesus taught them indeed to forsake all for
Him. It was no arbitrary command, but the simple application of a law
in nature to the kingdom of His grace — that the more perfectly the
old occupant is cast out, the more completely can be the possession
of the new, and the more entirely the renewal of all within.
This
principle has a still deeper application. The truly spiritual gifts
which are the working of God's own Holy Spirit within us — these
surely need not be also given up and surrendered? They do indeed.
The interchange of giving up and taking in is a life process, and may
not cease for a moment. No sooner does the believer begin to rejoice
in the possession of what he has, than the inflow of new grace is
hindered, and stagnation threatens. It is only into the thirst of an
empty soul that the streams of living waters flow. Ever thirsting is
the secret of never thirsting. Each blessed experience we receive as
a gift of God must at once be returned back to Him from whom it came,
in praise and love, in self-sacrifice and service. Only so can it be
restored to us again, fresh and beautiful with the bloom of heaven.
Is not this the wonderful lesson that Isaac on Mt. Moriah teaches us?
Was he not the son of promise, the God-given life, the wonder-gift of
the omnipotence of Him who quickens the dead? (Rom. 4:17.) And yet
even he had to be given up and sacrificed, that he might be received
back again a thousandfold more precious than before — a type of the
Only-begotten of the Father, whose pure and holy life had to be given
up before He could receive it again in resurrection power, and make
His people partakers of it. A type, too, of what takes place in the
life of each believer, as, instead of resting content with past
experiences or present grace, he presses on, forgetting and giving up
all that is behind, and reaching out to the fullest possible
attaining of Christ his life.
And
is such surrender of all for Christ a single step, the act and
experience of a moment, or is it a path of daily renewed and
progressive attainment? It is both. There may be a moment in the life
of a believer when he gets a first sight, or a deeper insight, into
this most blessed truth. Then, being made willing in the day of God's
power, he does indeed, in an act of the will, gather up all of life
yet before him into the decision of a moment, and lay himself onto
the altar as a living and an acceptable sacrifice. Such moments have
often been the blessed transition from a life of wandering and
failure to a life of abiding and power Divine. But even then his
daily life becomes, what the life must be of each one who has no such
experience, the unceasing prayer for more light on the meaning of
entire surrender, the ever-renewed offering up of all he has to God.
Believer,
if would you abide in Christ, see here then the blessed path. Nature
shrinks back from such self-denial and crucifixion in its rigid
application to our life to its whole extent. But what nature does not
love and cannot perform, grace will accomplish, and make to you a
life of joy and glory. Only yield up yourself to Christ your Lord.
The conquering power of His incoming presence will make it joy to
cast out all that was most precious before. "A hundredfold in
this life” (Mark 10:30)...this word of the Master comes true to all
who, with whole-hearted faithfulness, accept His commands to forsake
all. The blessed receiving soon makes the giving up most blessed too.
And the secret of a life of close abiding will be seen to be simply
this: As I give myself wholly to Christ, I find the power to take Him
wholly for myself; and as I lose myself and all I have for Him, He
takes me wholly for Himself and gives Himself wholly to me.
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