I want to add a word about _personal prayer_ in this connexion, for I
believe many owe their loss to a neglect of that essential. The lack of
prayer shows over-confidence in oneself, and accounts for many falls.
'Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and
watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication.' This is
indeed a necessary condition of keeping the blessing.
My closing question Is a very straight one. Have you got the blessing
of a clean heart now? If you have had it and lost it, seek it once
more. Make haste to the altar; renew your consecration again, claiming
the blessing, and the Lord will restore you.
XV
Fighting Holiness
'_Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life._' (1 Timothy
vi. 12.)
My object, in announcing 'Fighting Holiness' as my subject, is to make
it quite clear that a Full Salvation does not mean a hot-house
emotionalism or glass-case sanctity, but a vigorous, daring, aggressive
religion, on the lines of the Saviour's words, 'The Kingdom of Heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force'.
If this text, 'Fight the good fight of faith', means anything at all,
it means you must struggle for the thing you believe in. If you do not
fight for it, the inference is either that you have little love for and
confidence in your cause, or that you are indolent and unfaithful to
that cause.
You say you believe in the rightness of God's claims upon the hearts
and lives of men; you believe in the humiliation and passion of Christ
to redeem men; you believe in the necessity for and possibility of
rescuing human souls from the curse of evil and the eternal penalty of
sin; but, believe me, your faith is vain if you do not stand for, and
labour and fight to enforce, God's claims to proclaim Christ's
redeeming grace, and to deliver men from going down to the pit.
The aspects of personal Holiness set out in terms such as 'perfect
peace' and the 'rest of faith' are frequently before us, and I do not
desire to reduce their value, for it is a blessed truth that 'we which
have believed do enter into rest'. If by the 'rest of faith' is meant
that calm confidence in the power and grace of God by which the
believing and obedient soul is kept in perfect peace, then, all right;
that, however, is very different from the only-believe-and-do-nothing
policy of some people who adopt the phrase. Let there be no mistake
about the fact that every consecrated man must take his place in God's
fighting line.
The story of Mary of Bethany, 'who sat at the Lord's feet, and heard
His word', also appeals to me; but the emphasis is not quite as some
people put it. What Christ commended in Mary was not that she sat at
His feet whilst Martha did all the hard work, but that she had 'chosen
the good part--the one thing needful', which her anxious sister seems
to have overlooked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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