Milo

16 MARCH (PREACHED 1770)

Wait simply on Him

‘And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.’ Luke 9:28
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Luke 2:25–38

The Lord always accepts his people that wait simply upon him, though visits resembling what is here recorded are vouchsafed but now and then. The disciples were constantly with Jesus and often attended him when praying, but they only saw him transfigured once. He has many ways of doing us good besides that of giving sensible comfort. A season of special consolation is often near at hand when least expected, and therefore while we are waiting in the use of means, we have cause to be expecting good from the Lord—for he has not said to any, Seek ye me in vain [Isaiah 45:19].
They that live without prayer are out of the way of peace and comfort. You must not charge the Lord foolishly; if you seek him you shall find him—if you neglect him, the fault is your own. It is a dismal state to be prayerless. Why, are you not afraid to close your eyes at night, or to go out of your houses in the morning?
FOR MEDITATION:
When my prayers are a burden and task,
I have heard of thy wonderful name,
No wonder I little receive;
How great and exalted thou art;
O LORD, make me willing to ask,
But ah! I confess to my shame,
Since thou art so ready to give
It faintly impresses my heart:
Although I am bought with thy blood,
The beams of thy glory display,
And all thy salvation is mine;
As PETER once saw thee appear;
At a distance from thee my chief good,
That transported like him I may say,
I wander, and languish, and pine.
‘It is good for my soul to be here.’

But if thou hast appointed me still, To wrestle, and suffer, and fight;
Oh make me resigned to thy will, For all thine appointments are right:
This mercy, at least, I entreat, That knowing how vile I have been,
I with MARY may wait at thy feet, And weep o’er the pardon of sin.

SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 2 [5/5], LUKE 9:28

March 15th

The discipline of dismay

And as they followed, they were afraid. Mark 10:32.

At the beginning we were sure we knew all about Jesus Christ, it was a delight to sell all and to fling ourselves out in a hardihood of love; but now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is on in front and He looks strange. “Jesus went before them: and they were amazed.”
There is an aspect of Jesus that chills the heart of a disciple to the core and makes the whole spiritual life gasp for breath. This strange Being with His face set like a flint and His striding determination strikes terror into me. He is no longer Counsellor and Comrade, He is taken up with a point of view I know nothing about, and I am amazed at Him. At first I was confident that I understood Him, but now I am not so sure. I begin to realize there is a distance between Jesus Christ and me; I can no longer be familiar with Him. He is ahead of me and He never turns round; I have no idea where He is going, and the goal has become strangely far off.
Jesus Christ had to fathom every sin and every sorrow man could experience, and that is what makes Him seem strange. When we see Him in this aspect we do not know Him, we do not recognize one feature of his life, and we do not know how to begin to follow Him. He is on in front, a Leader Who is very strange, and we have no comradeship with Him.
The discipline of dismay is an essential necessity in the life of discipleship. The danger is to get back to a little fire of our own and kindle enthusiasm at it (cf. Isaiah 50:10–11 ). When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come that following of Jesus which is an unspeakable joy.

March 14th

Obedience

His servants ye are to whom ye obey. Romans 6:16.

The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated because I have yielded. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame for it because at a point away back I yielded myself to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.
Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: ‘I must have it at once,’ whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind), once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bond-slave to that thing. There is no release in human power at all, but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the dominating power, viz., the Lord Jesus Christ. “He hath anointed Me … to preach deliverance to the captives.”
We find this out in the most ridiculously small ways—‘Oh, I can give that habit up when I like.’ You cannot, you will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you yielded to it willingly. It is easy to sing—“He will break every fetter,” and at the same time be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. Yielding to Jesus will break every form of slavery in any human life.

March 13th

The abandonment of God

God so loved the world that He gave … John 3:16.

Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself. My experimental knowledge of salvation will be along the line of deliverance from sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God’s personality, and I am thrilled with something infinitely greater than myself; I am caught up into the abandonment of God.
To say that we are called to preach holiness or sanctification, is to get into a side-eddy. We are called to proclaim Jesus Christ. The fact that He saves from sin and makes us holy is part of the effect of the wonderful abandonment of God.
Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have realized what John 3:16 means, that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us, without any calculation. The consequence of abandonment never enters into our outlook because our life is taken up with Him.