The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life

CHAPTER XVII THE JOY OF OBEDIENCE Having spoken of some of the difficulties in this life of faith, let me now speak of some of its joys, and foremost among these stands the joy of obedience. Long ago I met somewhere with this sentence, ìPerfect obedience would be perfect happiness if only we had perfect confidence in the power we were obeying.î I remember being struck with the saying as the revelation of a possible, although hitherto undreamed of, way of happiness, and often afterwards, even when full of inward rebellion, did that saying recur to me as the vision of a rest, and yet of a possible development that would soothe and at the same time satisfy all my yearnings. Need I say that this rest has been revealed to me now not as a vision, but as a reality, and that I have seen in the Lord Jesus the Master to whom we may yield up our implicit obedience and, taking His yoke upon us, may find our perfect rest? You little know, dear hesitating soul, of the joy you are missing. The Master has revealed Himself to you and is calling for your complete surrender, and you shrink and hesitate. A measure of surrender you are willing to make, and think indeed it is fit and proper that you should, but an utter abandonment without any reserves seems to you too much to be asked for. You are afraid of it. It evolves too much, you think, and is too great a risk. To be measurably obedient, you desire. To be perfectly obedient appalls you. Then, too, you see other souls who seem able to walk with easy consciences in a far wider path than that which appears to be marked out for you, and you ask yourself why this need be. It seems strange and perhaps hard to you that you must do what they need not, and must leave undone what they have liberty to do. Ah, dear Christian, this very difference between you is your privilege, though you do not yet know it. Your Lord says, He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. You have his commandments. Those you envy have them not. You know the mind of your Lord about many things, in which, as yet, they are walking in darkness. Is not this a privilege? Is it a cause for regret that your soul is brought into such near and intimate relations with your Master that he is able to tell you things which those who are farther off may not know? Do you not realize what a tender degree of intimacy is implied in this? There are many relations in life that require from the different parties only very moderate degrees of devotion. We may have really pleasant friendships with one another, and yet spend a large part of our lives in separate interests and widely differing pursuits, when together we may greatly enjoy one another's society, and find many congenial points, but separation is not any especial distress to us, and other and more intimate friendships do not interfere. There is not enough love between us to give us either the right or the desire to enter into and share one another's most private affairs. A certain degree of reserve and distance seems to be the suitable thing in such relations as these. But there are other relations in life where all this is changed. The friendship becomes love. The two hearts give themselves to each other to be no longer two, but one. A union of soul takes place which makes all that belongs to one the property of the other. Separate interests and separate paths in life are no longer possible. Things that were lawful before become unlawful now because of the nearness of the tie that binds. The reserve and distance suitable to mere friendship become fatal in love. Love gives all, and must have all in return. The wishes of one become binding obligations to the other, and the deepest desire of each heart is that it may know every secret wish or longing of the other in order that it may fly on the wings of the wind to gratify it. Do such as these chafe under this yoke which love imposes? Do they envy the cool, calm, reasonable friendships they see around them, and regret the nearness into which their souls are brought to their beloved one because of the obligations it creates? Do they not rather glory in these very obligations, and inwardly pity, with a tender yet exulting joy, the poor, far-off ones who dare not come so near? Is not every fresh revelation of the wishes of the loved one a fresh delight and privilege? And is any path found hard which their love compels them to travel? Ah, dear soul, if you have ever known this, even for a few hours in any earthly relation, if you have ever loved any of your fellow human beings enough to find sacrifice and service on their behalf a joy, if a whole-souled abandonment of your will to the will of another has ever gleamed across you as a blessed and longed-for privilege, or as a sweet and precious reality, then, by all the tender longing love of your heavenly lover, would I entreat you to let it be so towards Christ. He loves you with more than the love of friendship. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so does he rejoice over you, and nothing but the bride's surrender will satisfy him. He has given you all, and he asks for all in return. The slightest reserve will grieve him to the heart. He spared not himself, and how can you spare yourself? For your sake he poured out in a lavish abandonment all that he had, and for his sake you must pour out all that you have without stint or measure. Oh, be generous in your self-surrender! Meet his measureless devotion for you with a measureless devotion to him. Be glad and eager to throw yourself unreservedly into his loving arms, and to hand over the reins of government to him. Whatever there is of you, let him have it all. Give up forever everything that is separate from him. Consent to resign from this time forward all liberty of choice and glory in the blessed nearness of union which makes this enthusiasm of devotedness not only possible, but necessary. Have you never longed to lavish your love and attentions upon someone far off from you in position or circumstances with whom you were not intimate enough for any closer approach? Have you not felt a capacity for self-surrender and devotedness that has seemed to burn within you like a fire, and yet had no object upon which it dared to lavish itself? Have not your hands been full of alabaster-boxes of ointment very precious, which you have never been near enough to any heart to pour out? If, then, you are hearing the loving voice of your Lord calling you out into a place of nearness to himself, that will require a separation from all else, and that will make an enthusiasm of devotedness not only possible, but necessary, will you shrink or hesitate? Will you think it hard that he reveals to you more of his mind than he does to others, and that he will not allow you to be happy in anything that separates you from himself? Do you want to go where he cannot go with you, or to have pursuits which he cannot share? No, no, a thousand times no! You will spring out to meet his lovely will with an eager joy. Even his slightest wish will become a binding law to you that it would fairly break your heart to disobey. You will glory in the very narrowness of the path he marks out for you, and will pity, with an infinite pity, the poor far-off ones who have missed this precious joy. The obligations of love will be to you its sweetest privileges, and the right you have acquired to lavish the uttermost wealth of abandonment of all that you have upon your lord will seem to lift you into a region of unspeakable glory. The perfect happiness of perfect obedience will dawn upon your soul, and you will begin to know something of what Jesus meant when he said, I delight to do thy will, O my God. But do you think the joy in this will be all on your side? Has the Lord no joy in those who have thus surrendered themselves to him, and who love to obey him? Ah, my friends, we are not able to understand this, but surely the Scriptures reveal to us glimpses of the delight, the satisfaction, the joy our Lord has in us, which rejoice our souls with their marvelous suggestions of blessedness. That we should need him is easy to comprehend. That he should need us seems incomprehensible. That our desire should be toward him is a matter of course, but that his desire should be toward us passes the bounds of human belief, and yet he says it, and what can we do but believe him? He has made our hearts capable of this supreme overmastering affection, and has offered himself as the object of it. It is infinitely precious to him. So much does he value it, that he has made it the first and chiefest of all his commandments that we should love him with all our might and with all our strength. Continually, at every heart, he is knocking, asking to be taken in as the supreme object of love. Wilt thou have me, he says to the believer, to be thy beloved? Wilt thou follow me into suffering and loneliness, and endure hardness for my sake, and ask for no reward but my smile of approval and my word of praise? Wilt thou throw thyself with a passion of abandonment into my will? Wilt thou give up to me the absolute control of thyself and of all thou hast? Wilt thou be content with pleasing me and me only? May I have my way with thee in all things? Wilt thou come into so close a union with me as to make a separation from the world necessary? Wilt thou accept me for thy heavenly bridegroom, and leave all others to cleave only to me? In a thousand ways he makes this offer of union with himself to every believer. But all do not say yes to him. Other loves and other interests seem to them too precious to be cast aside. They do not miss heaven because of this, but they miss an unspeakable present joy. You, however, are not one of these. From the very first, your soul has cried out eagerly and gladly to all his offers, Yes, Lord, yes! You are more than ready to pour out upon him all your richest treasures of love and devotedness. You have brought to him an enthusiasm of self-surrender that may, perhaps, disturb and distress the so-called prudent and moderate Christians around you. Your love makes necessary a separation from the world of which a lower love cannot even conceive. Sacrifices and services are possible and sweet to you that could not come into the grasp of a more half-hearted devotedness. The life of love upon which you have entered gives you the right to a lavish outpouring of your all upon your beloved one. An intimacy and friendship which more distant souls cannot enter upon become now not only your privilege, but your duty. Your Lord claims from you, because of your union with him, far more than he claims of them. What to them is lawful, love has made unlawful for you. To you he can make known his secrets, and to you he looks for an instant response to every requirement of his love. Oh, it is wonderful, the glorious, unspeakable privilege upon which you have entered! How little it will matter to you if men shall hate you, and shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for his dear sake. You may well rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for, behold, your reward is great in heaven, for if you are a partaker of his suffering, you shall also be of his glory. In you he is seen of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. Your love and devotedness are his precious reward for all he has done for you. It is unspeakably sweet to him. Do not be afraid, then, to let yourself go in a hard-hold devotedness to your Lord that can brook no reserves. Others may not approve, but he will, and that is enough. Do not stint or measure your obedience or your service. Let your heart and your hand be as free to serve him as his heart and hand were to serve you. Let him have all there is of you, body, soul, mind, spirit, time, talents, voice, everything. Lay your whole life open before him that he may control it. Say to him each day, Lord, enable me to regulate this day so as to please thee. Give me spiritual insight to discover what is thy will in all the relations of my life. Guide me as to my pursuits, my friendships, my reading, my dress, my Christian work. Do not let there be a day nor an hour in which you are not consciously doing his will and following him wholly. A personal service to your Lord such as this will give a halo to the poorest life and gild the most monotonous existence with a heavenly glow. Have you ever grieved that the romance of youth is so soon lost in the hard realities of the world? Bring Christ thus into your life and into all its details, and a romance far grander than the brightest days of youth could ever know will thrill your soul and nothing will seem hard or stern again. The meanest life will be glorified by this. Often as I have watched a poor woman at her wash-tub and have thought of all the disheartening accessories of such a life and have been tempted to wonder why such lives need to be, there has come over me, with a thrill of joy, the recollection of this possible glorification of it, and I have realized that even this homely life lived in Christ and with Christ, following him whithersoever he might lead, would be filled with a spiritual romance that would make every hour of it grand, while to the most wealthy or most powerful of earthly lives nothing more glorious could be possible. Christ himself, when he was on earth, declared the truth that there was no blessedness equal to the blessedness of obedience. And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said to him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. More blessed even than to have been the earthly mother of our Lord, or to have carried him in our arms and nourished him in our bosoms, and who could ever measure the bliss of that, is it to hear and obey his will. May our surrendered hearts reach out with an eager delight to discover and embrace the lovely will of our loving God.