God (Christianity) -- Worship and love; Spirituality
Our break with the world will be the direct outcome of our changed
relation to God. For the world of fallen men does not honor God.
Millions call themselves by His Name, it is true, and pay some token
respect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really
honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the
question of who is _above_, and his true position will be exposed. Let
him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God
and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human
love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will
be exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in the
choices he makes day after day throughout his life.
"Be thou exalted" is the language of victorious spiritual experience. It
is a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace. It is
central in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach a
place where life and lips join to say continually "Be thou exalted," and
a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life
ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the
very essence of simplicity. By the exercise of his will he has set his
course, and on that course he will stay as if guided by an automatic
pilot. If blown off course for a moment by some adverse wind he will
surely return again as by a secret bent of the soul. The hidden motions
of the Spirit are working in his favor, and "the stars in their courses"
fight for him. He has met his life problem at its center, and
everything else must follow along.
Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by this
voluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degrade
himself as a man; rather he finds his right place of high honor as one
made in the image of his Creator. His deep disgrace lay in his moral
derangement, his unnatural usurpation of the place of God. His honor
will be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting God
over all he finds his own highest honor upheld.
Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of
another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the
servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to
God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely
overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of the sins that rule his
members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver
for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is
light.
Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take
again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts
cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful
abode.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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