You still say perhaps: "That is the stage we want to come to." No; God
forbid you should stop there. You may get in that third stage--the
burning heart--and yet something is still wanting--the revelation of
Christ. The disciples had had a blessed experience of His divine powers,
but He had not revealed Himself, and oh! how often it is that at
Conventions and in churches, and in meetings and in blessed fellowship
with God's saints, our hearts burn within us. These are precious
experiences of the working of God's grace and Spirit, and yet there is
something wanting. What is that? Jesus Himself has been working upon us,
and the power of his risen life has touched us, but we cannot say, "I
have met Him. He has made Himself known to me." Oh, the difference
between a burning heart, which becomes cold after a time, which comes by
fits and starts, and the blessed revelation of Jesus Himself as my
Saviour, taking charge of me and blessing me and keeping me every day!
This is the stage of
_The satisfied heart._
Oh my brother, my sister! It is what I ask for you, and it is what I am
sure you ask for yourself. I ask it for myself. Lord Jesus! may we know
Thee in thy divine glory as the risen One, our Jesus, our Beloved and
our mighty One. Oh! if there are any sad ones who cannot take this in,
and who say, "I have never known the joy of religion yet"--listen, we
are going to tell you how you can. All will center round this one thing,
that just as a little child lives day by day in the arms of its mother,
and grows up year by year under a mother's eye, it is a possibility that
you can live every day and hour of your life in fellowship with the Holy
Jesus.
_He will do it for you._
Come, and let your sad heart begin to hope. Will He reveal Himself? He
did it to the disciples and He will do it to you. Perhaps there are
some who have got beyond the sad heart and who yet feel, "I have not
got what I want." If you throw open your heart and give up everything
but just believing and allowing Him to do what He wants, it will come.
God be praised! it will come.
_Jesus will reveal Himself._
Perhaps you have arrived at the stage of the burning heart, and can tell
of many blessed experiences, but somehow there is a worm at the root.
The experiences do not last, and the heart is so changeable. Oh come, my
beloved! Follow Christ. Say, "Jesus, reveal Thyself that we may know
Thee Thyself. We ask not only to drink of the living water, we want the
fountain. We ask not only to bathe ourselves in the light, we want the
Sun of Righteousness within our hearts. We ask not only to know Thee,
who hast touched us and warmed our hearts and blessed us, but we want to
know that we have the unchangeable Jesus dwelling within our hearts and
abiding with us forevermore."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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