The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life

CHAPTER XIV GROWTH One great objection made against those who advocate this life of faith is, that they do not teach a growth in grace. They are supposed to teach that the soul arrives in one moment at a state of perfection, beyond which there is no advance, and that all the exhortations in the scriptures that point toward growth and development are rendered void by this teaching. Since exactly the opposite of this is true, I will try, if possible, to answer these objections and to show what seems to me the scriptural way of growing and in what place the soul must be in order to grow. The text which is most frequently quoted is 2 Peter 3.18, But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now, this text expresses exactly what we who teach this life of faith believe to be God's will for us, and what we also believe He has made it possible for us to experience. We accept, in their very fullest meaning, all the commands and promises concerning our being no more children, and our growing up into Christ in all things, until we come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. We rejoice that we need not continue always to be babes needing milk, but that we may, by reason of use and development, become such as have need of strong meat, skillful in the word of righteousness, and able to discern both good and evil. And none would grieve more than we ourselves at the thought of any finality in the Christian life beyond which there could be no advance. But then we believe in a growing that does really produce continually progressing maturity, and in a development that, as a fact, does bring forth ripe fruit. We expect to reach the aim set before us, and if we do not find ourselves on the way towards it, we feel sure there must be some fault in our growing. No parent would be satisfied with the growth of his child if, day after day, and year after year, it remained the same helpless babe it was in the first months of its life. And no farmer would feel comfortable under such growing of his grain as should stop short at the blade, and never produce the ear or the full corn in the ear. Growth, to be real, must be progressive, and the days and weeks and months should bring a development and increase of maturity in the thing growing. But is this the case with a large part of that which is called growth in grace? Does not the very Christian who is the most strenuous in his longings and his efforts after this growth too often find that, at the end of the year, he is not as far on in his Christian experience as at the beginning, and that his zeal and his devotedness and his separation from the world are not as whole-souled or complete as when his Christian life first began? I was once urging upon a company of Christians the duty and privilege of an immediate and definite step into the land of promise, when a lady of great intelligence interrupted me with what she evidently felt to be a complete rebuttal of all I had been saying, by exclaiming, Ah, but, Mrs. Smith, I believe in growing in grace. How long have you been growing? I asked. About twenty-five years, was her answer. And how much more unworldly and devoted to the Lord are you now than when your Christian life began? I continued. Alas! was the answer. I fear I am not nearly so much so. And with this answer her eyes were opened to see that at all events her way of growing had not been successful, but quite the reverse. The trouble with her, and with every other such case, is simply this. They are trying to grow into grace instead of in it. They are like a rose-bush planted by a gardener in the hard, stony path with a view to its growing into the flower-bed, and which has, of course, dwindled and withered in consequence instead of flourishing and maturing. The children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness, are a perfect picture of this sort of growing. They were traveling for about forty years, taking many weary steps, and finding but little rest from their wanderings, and yet, at the end of it all, were no nearer the promised land than they were at the beginning. When they started on their wanderings at Kadesh Barnea, they were at the borders of the land, and a few steps would have taken them into it. When they ended their wanderings in the plains of Moab, they were also at its borders, only with this difference, that now there was a river to cross, which at first there would not have been. All their wanderings and fightings in the wilderness had not put them in possession of one inch of the promised land. In order to get possession of this land, it was necessary first to be in it, and in order to grow in grace, it is necessary first to be planted in grace. When once in the land, however, their conquest was rapid, and when once planted in grace, the growth of the spiritual life becomes vigorous and rapid beyond all conceiving. For grace is a most fruitful soil, and the plants that grow therein are plants of a marvelous growth. They are tended by a divine husbandman, and are warmed by the sun of righteousness and watered by the dew from heaven. Surely it is no wonder that they bring forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. But, it will be asked, what is meant by growing in grace? It is difficult to answer this question, because so few people have any conception of what the grace of God really is. To say that it is free, unmerited favor, only expresses a little of its meaning. It is the unhindered, wondrous, boundless love of God, poured out upon us in an infinite variety of ways, without stint or measure, not according to our deserving, but according to His measureless heart of love, which passes knowledge. So unfathomable are its heights and depths. I sometimes think a totally different meaning is given to the word love, when it is associated with God, from that which we so well understand in its human application. We seem to consider that divine love is hard, and self-seeking, and distant, concerned about its own glory, and indifferent to the fate of others. But, if ever human love was tender, and self-sacrificing, and devoted, if ever it could bear and forbear, if ever it could suffer gladly for its loved one, if ever it was willing to pour itself out in a lavish abandonment for the comfort or pleasure of its objects, then infinitely more is divine love tender, and self-sacrificing, and devoted, and glad to bear and forbear, and suffer, and eager to lavish its best of gifts and blessings upon the objects of its love. Put together all the tenderest love you know of, dear reader, the deepest you have ever felt, and the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you, and heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by infinity, and you will begin, perhaps, to have some faint glimpses of the love and grace of God. In order to grow in grace, therefore, the soul must be planted in the very heart of this divine love, enveloped by it, steeped in it. It must let itself out to the joy of it, and must refuse to know anything else. It must grow in the apprehension of it, day by day. It must entrust everything to its care, and must have no shadow of doubt but that it will surely order all things well. To grow in grace is opposed to all growth in self-dependence or self-effort, to all legality, in fact, of every kind. It is to put our growing, as well as everything else, into the hands of the Lord, and leave it with Him. It is to be so satisfied with our husbandman, and with his skill and wisdom, that not a question will cross our minds as to his mode of treatment, or his plan of cultivation. It is to grow as the lilies grow, or as the babies grow, without care and without anxiety, to grow by the power of an inward life principle that cannot help but grow, to grow because we live, and therefore must grow, to grow because He who has planted us has planted a growing thing, and has made us on purpose to grow. Surely this is what our Lord meant when He said, Consider the lilies, how they grow! They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Or when he says again, Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? There is no effort in the growing of a babe, or of a lily. The lily does not toil nor spin, it does not stretch nor strain, it does not make any effort of any kind to grow. It is not conscious even that it is growing. But by an inward life principle, and through the nurturing care of God's providence, and the fostering of caretaker or gardener, by the heat of the sun, and the falling of the rain, it grows, and buds, and blossoms into the beautiful plant God meant it to be. The result of this sort of growing in the Christian life is sure. Even Solomon in all his glory, our Lord says, was not arrayed like one of God's lilies. Solomon's array cost much toiling and spinning, and gold and silver in abundance. But the lily's array costs none of these. And though we may toil and spin to make for ourselves beautiful spiritual garments, and may strain and stretch in our efforts after spiritual growth, we shall accomplish nothing. For no man, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature, and no array of ours can ever equal the beautiful dress with which the great husbandman clothes the plants that grow in his garden of grace, and under his fostering care. Could I but make each one of my readers realize how utterly helpless we are in this matter of growing, I am convinced a large part of the strain would be taken out of many lives at once. Imagine a child possessed of the monomania that he would not grow unless he made some personal effort after it, and who should insist upon a combination of ropes and pulleys whereby to stretch himself up to the desired height. He might, it is true, spend his days and years in a weary strain, but after all there would be no change in the inexorable fiat. No man, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature, and his weary efforts would be only wasted if they did not actually hinder the long fore end. Imagine a lily trying to clothe itself in beautiful colors and graceful lines, and drawing to its aids, as so many of God's children try to do, the wisdom and strength of all the lilies around it. I think such a lily would very soon become a chronic case of spiritual perplexities and difficulties, similar to some that are familiar to every Christian worker. Neither child nor lily is ever found doing such a vain and foolish thing as trying to grow, but I fear many of God's children are doing exactly this foolish thing. They know that they ought to grow, and they feel within them an instinct that longs for growth, but instead of letting the divine husbandman care for their growing, as it is surely his business to do, they think to accomplish it by their own toiling and spinning and stretching and straining, and in consequence they pass their lives in a round of worrisome self-efforts that exhaust their energies while all the time they find themselves to their infinite grief growing backward rather than forward. Ye flowerets of the field, said Arthas said, who turn your tender faces to the sun, what secret know ye that ye grow content? What we all need is to consider the flowers of the field and learn their secret. Grow by all means, dear Christians, but grow, I beseech you, in God's way, which is the only effectual way. See to it that you are planted in grace, and then let the divine husbandman cultivate you in his own way and by his own means. Put yourselves out in the sunshine of his presence, and let the dew of heaven come down upon you, and see what will be the result. Leaves and flowers and fruit must surely come in their season, for your husbandman is skillful, and he never fails in his harvesting. Only see to it that you oppose no hindrance to the shining of the sun of righteousness or the falling of the dew from heaven. The thinnest covering may serve to keep off the sunshine and the dew, and the plant may wither even where these are most abundant. And so also the slightest barrier between your soul and Christ may cause you to dwindle and fade as a plant in a cellar or under a bushel. Keep the sky clear. Open wide every avenue of your being to receive the blessed influences your divine husbandman may bring to bear upon you. Bask in the sunshine of his love. Drink of the waters of his goodness. Keep your face upturned to him as the flowers do to the sun. Look and your souls shall live and grow. But it may be objected here that we are not inanimate flowers, but intelligent human beings with personal powers and personal responsibilities. This is true, and it makes this important difference that what the flower is by nature we must be by an intelligent and free surrender. To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive and yet infinitely active also. Passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood, but it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside to let God work. You need make no efforts to grow, therefore, but let your efforts instead be all concentrated on this, that you abide in the vine. The divine husbandman who has the care of the vine will care also for you who are his branches, and will so prune and purge and water and tend you, that you will grow and bring forth fruit, and your fruit shall remain, and, like the lily, you shall find yourself arrayed in apparel so glorious that that of Solomon will be as nothing to it. What if you seem to yourselves to be planted at this moment in a desert soil where nothing can grow? Put yourselves absolutely into the hands of the good husbandman, and he will at once begin to make that very desert blossom as the rose, and will cause springs and fountains of water to start up out of its sandy wastes. For the promise is true, that the man that trusts in the Lord shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when the heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green, and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. It is the great prerogative of our divine husbandman that he is able to turn any soil, whatever it may be like, into the soil of grace the moment we put our growing into his hands. He does not need to transplant us into a different field, but right where we are, with just the circumstances that surround us, he makes his sun to shine and his dew to fall upon us, and transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances into the chiefest and most blessed means of our growth. I care not what the circumstances may be. His wonder-working power can accomplish this, and we must trust him with it all. Surely he is a husbandman we can trust, and if he sends storms or winds or rains or sunshine, all must be accepted as his hands, with the most unwavering confidence that he who has undertaken to cultivate us and to bring us to maturity knows the very best way of accomplishing his end, and regulates the elements which are at all his disposal expressly with a view to our most rapid growth. Let me entreat of you, then, to give up all your efforts after growing, and simply to let yourself grow. Leave it all to the husbandman whose care it is, and who alone is able to manage it. No difficulties in your case can baffle him if you will only put yourselves absolutely into his hands, and let him have his own way with you. No dwarfing of your growth in the years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in your development, can in the least mar the perfect work that he will accomplish. His own gracious promise to his backsliding children assures you of this. I will heal their backsliding, he says. I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as dew unto Israel. He shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow shall return. They shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine. The scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon. And again he says, Be not afraid, for the pastures of the wilderness do spring. For the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God that hath dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never be ashamed. Oh, that you could know just what your Lord meant when he said, Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow! They toil not, neither do they spin. Surely these words give us a picture of a life and growth far different from the ordinary life and growth of Christians, a life of rest, and a growth without effort, and yet a life and a growth crowned with glorious results. And to every soul that will thus become a lily in the garden of the Lord, and will grow as the lilies grow, the same glorious array will be as surely given as was given to them, and they will know the fulfillment of that wonderful mystical passage concerning their beloved that he feedeth among the lilies. I feel as weak as a violet, alone with the awful sky, winds wander and dews drop earthward, rains fall, suns rise and set, earth whirls, and all but to prosper a poor little violet. We may rest assured of this, that all the resources of God's infinite grace will be brought to bear on the growing of the tiniest flower in his spiritual garden, as certainly as they are in his earthly creation. And as the violet abides peacefully in its little place, content to receive its daily portion without concerning itself about the wandering of the winds, or the falling of the rain, so must we repose in the present moment as it comes to us from God, contented with our daily portion, and without anxious thought as to anything that may be whirling around us in God's glorious universe, sure that all things will be made to prosper for us. This is the kind of growth in grace in which we who have entered into a life of full trust believe, a growth without care or anxiety on our part, but a growth which does actually grow, which blossoms out into flower and fruit, and becomes like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, whose leaf also does not wither, and who prospers in whatsoever he doeth. And we rejoice to know that there are growing up now in the Lord's heritage many such plants, who, as the lilies behold the face of the sun and grow thereby, are by beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, being changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Should you ask such how it is they grow so rapidly, and with such success, their answer would be that they are not concerned about their growing, and are hardly conscious that they do grow, that their Lord has told them to abide in him, and has promised that, if they do thus abide, they shall certainly bring forth much fruit, and that they are concerned therefore only about the abiding which is their part, and are content to leave the cultivating, and the growing, and the training, and the pruning to their good husbandmen, who alone is able to manage these things, or to bring them about. You will find that such souls are not engaged in watching self, but in looking unto Jesus. They do not toil and spend for their spiritual garments, but leave themselves in the hands of the Lord to be arrayed as it may please him. Self-effort and self-dependence are at an end with them. Formerly they tried to be not only the garden, but the gardener also as well, and undertook to fulfill the duties of both. Now they are content to be what they are, the garden only, and not the gardener, and they are willing to leave the gardener's duties to the divine husbandmen, who alone is responsible for their rightful performance. Their interest in self is gone, transferred over into the hands of another, and self, in consequence, has become nothing to them more and more, and Christ alone is seen to be all in all. And the blessed result is, that not even Solomon, in all his glory, was arrayed as these shall be. Let us look at the subject practically. We all know that growing is not a thing of effort, but is the result of an inward life principle of growth. All the stretching and pulling in the world could not make a dead oak grow, but a live oak grows without stretching. It is plain, therefore, that the essential thing is to get within you the growing life, and then you cannot help but grow. And this life is the life hid with Christ in God, the wonderful divine life of an indwelling Holy Ghost. Be filled with this, dear believer, and whether you are conscious of it or not, you must grow. You cannot help growing. Do not trouble about your growing, but see to it that you have the growing life. Abide in the vine. Let the life from Him flow through all your spiritual veins. Interpose no barrier to His mighty, life-giving power, working in you all the good pleasure of His will. Yield yourself up utterly to His lovely control. Put your growing into His hands as completely as you have put all your other affairs. Suffer Him to manage it as He will. Do not concern yourself about it, nor even think of it. Do not, as children do, keep digging up your plants to see if they are growing. Trust the Divine Husbandman absolutely and always. Accept each moment's dispensation as it comes to you from His dear hands as being the needed sunshine or due for that moment's growth. Say a continual yes to your Father's will. And finally, in this, as in all the other cares of your life, be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God that passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. If your growth in grace is of this sort, dear reader, you will surely know, sooner or later, a wonderful growing, and you will come to understand as you cannot now, it may be what the psalmist meant when he said, The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and flourishing.