www. bymonline. org | SEPTEMBER 2018
in their spiritual life because they limited their obedience to the mere standard of other Christians or to the conservative opinion of other saints.
God never duplicates the spiritual life in any two persons, and everyone who walks with Him will be called upon to say and do and experience things somewhat unlike them, or any other person. To save His children from aping each other, He will resort to terrific methods of separating and individualizing them; for He is determined that they shall obey Him, and not each other.
There is a realm of Christian counsel and uniformity of faith and practice; yet, within this range, the Holy Ghost ordains that all who are made perfect shall follow in an individual orbit. No saint perfectly obeyed God in the world that he did not have to say things and do things that nobody else on earth exactly agreed with. If you perfectly obey God, you will have to do some things outside of the judgments or tastes of your best friends. Nobody on earth could have been found to sanction the offering up of Isaac. Joseph ' s family did not agree with the imprudence of his dreams. If Paul had consulted the eleven apostles, he never would have done the things he did. Daniel went against the advice of all the old, sober heads in refusing the king ' s meat and wine. Perfect obedience must be independent, calm, settled and fearless.
How many thousands of souls have weakened in faith by not obeying God on some point, great or small, just because it did not meet the sanction of the circle of friends in which they moved!
He that makes a path in the air for all the birds, and a channel in the earth for all the streams of water, has ordained the line of obedience for each and every child of His; and if we yield ourselves up on boundless humility and persevering prayer and utter abandonment to the Holy Ghost, He will lead us along His line, and He will never lead another soul to take just the track He gives us.
The fear of fanaticism has prevented thousands from independent obedience. Some may ask,“ How shall I know that I am not going into fanaticism under the delusion of obedience?” If, on any line of obedience, however singular it may be to others, you have a lowly spirit, a sweet and tender flow of love, an eye single to pleasing God and not yourself, and a boundless love for others who do not follow your example, you may know you are led of God.
But if, on any individual leading you feel an impetuous, hasty, harsh, uncharitable disposition if you feel something within you that seems to push you in a hurry, or makes you denunciatory of others, or makes you want to force others to do as you do then you may know it is the devil.
It is impossible to be too independent and allfearless as long as the soul is kept in an ocean of lowly, tender, disinterested love supreme love to God and to His Word, and love to our neighbor as to ourself( Matt 22:36-40).
Our Thoughts Are Architects
As another remedy for weak and flagging obedience, I mention, keep the mind stayed on God and the things of His kingdom( Isa 26:3-4; Ps 1:1-6). There can be no greater safety in the spirit-life, to keep out the ingress of evil things, than for the mind to be always in a state of divine meditation. The intellect cannot do this of its own power; but if the spirit-nature is possessed by the Holy Ghost, then the inner spirit, uniting itself to the intellect, can keep it almost constantly on God or His attributes, or the operations of His grace, or the mysteries of His providence, or the revelations of His Word.
Nothing can be more dangerous than sinful wanderings of thought. As all outward sin must necessarily be committed first in the mind, so on the other hand, all enlargements of grace, all the altitudes of devotion, or progress in experience, must first take place in a spiritual thinking of the mind. Our thoughts are architects, which fashion all the bright, glittering castles of grace in which we find our true habitation in the kingdom of God.
We should be careful not to think too much of the past. About the only good thinking of the past can do for us is to serve for the deepening of our humility over its sinfulness, and the widening of our thankfulness because of the overwhelming mercies from the Lord.
But in the fullness of the Spirit, we are not to think of the past in such a way as to be disheartened, or to pine over its loss, or to be entangled with it; we are to be detached from all things in the past, as a bird may be supposed to be detached from last year ' s nest, which it flies by, unheeding its empty and dilapidated state, because its whole nature is filled with the glory of the present summer( Phil 3:1-14).
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