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Kept for
the Master's
Use
By
Frances Ridley
Havergal
Philadelphia
Henry Altemus Company
Copyrighted 1895, by Henry Altemus.
HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER,
PHILADELPHIA.
CONTENTS.
I. Our Lives kept for Jesus, 9
II. Our Moments kept for Jesus, 26
III. Our Hands kept for Jesus, 34
IV. Our Feet kept for Jesus, 46
V. Our Voices kept for Jesus, 51
VI. Our Lips kept for Jesus, 66
VII. Our Silver and Gold kept for Jesus, 79
VIII. Our Intellects kept for Jesus, 91
IX. Our Wills kept for Jesus, 96
X. Our Hearts kept for Jesus, 104
XI. Our Love kept for Jesus, 109
XII. Our Selves kept for Jesus, 115
XIII. Christ for us, 122
PREFATORY NOTE.
My beloved sister Frances finished revising the proofs of this book
shortly before her death on Whit Tuesday, June 3, 1879, but its
publication was to be deferred till the Autumn.
In appreciation of the deep and general sympathy flowing in to her
relatives, they wish that its publication should not be withheld. Knowing
her intense desire that Christ should be magnified, whether by her life
or in her death, may it be to His glory that in these pages she, being
dead,
'Yet speaketh!'
MARIA V. G. HAVERGAL.
Oakhampton, Worchestershire.
KEPT
FOR
The Master's Use.
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days;
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and 'beautiful' for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect, and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will and make it Thine;
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart; it _is_ Thine own;
It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure-store.
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, _only_, ALL for Thee.
CHAPTER I.
Our Lives kept for Jesus.
_'Keep my life, that it may be_
_Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.'_
Many a heart has echoed the little song:
'Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee!'
And yet those echoes have not been, in every case and at all times, so
clear, and full, and firm, so continuously glad as we would wish, and
perhaps expected. Some of us have said:
'I launch me forth upon a sea
Of boundless love and tenderness;'
and after a little we have found, or fancied, that there is a hidden leak
in our barque, and though we are doubtless still afloat, yet we are not
sailing with the same free, exultant confidence as at first. What is it
that has dulled and weakened the echo of our consecration song? what is
the little leak that hinders the swift and buoyant course of our
consecrated life? Holy Father, let Thy loving spirit guide the hand that
writes, and strengthen the heart of every one who reads what shall be
written, for Jesus' sake.
While many a sorrowfully varied answer to these questions may, and
probably will, arise from touched and sensitive consciences, each being
shown by God's faithful Spirit the special sin, the special yielding to
temptation which has hindered and spoiled the blessed life which they
sought to enter and enjoy, it seems to me that one or other of two things
has lain at the outset of the failure and disappointment.
First, it may have arisen from want of the simplest belief in the
simplest fact, as well as want of trust in one of the simplest and
plainest words our gracious Master ever uttered! The unbelieved fact
being simply that He hears us; the untrusted word being one of those
plain, broad foundation-stones on which we rested our whole weight, it
may be many years ago, and which we had no idea we ever doubted, or were
in any danger of doubting now,--'Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise
cast out.'
'Take my life!' We have said it or sung it before the Lord, it may be
many times; but if it were only once whispered in His ear with full
purpose of heart, should we not believe that He heard it? And if we know
that He heard it, should we not believe that He has answered it, and
fulfilled this, our heart's desire? For with Him hearing means heeding.
Then why should we doubt that He did verily take our lives when we
offered them--our bodies when we presented them? Have we not been
wronging His faithfulness all this time by practically, even if
unconsciously, doubting whether the prayer ever really reached Him? And
if so, is it any wonder that we have not realized all the power and joy
of full consecration? By some means or other He has to teach us to trust
implicitly at every step of the way. And so, if we did not really trust
in this matter, He has had to let us find out our want of trust by
withholding the sensible part of the blessing, and thus stirring us up to
find out why it is withheld.
An offered gift must be either accepted or refused. Can He have refused
it when He has said, 'Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out'?
If not, then it must have been accepted. It is just the same process as
when we came to Him first of all, with the intolerable burden of our
sins. There was no help for it but to come with them to Him, and take His
word for it that He would not and did not cast us out. And so coming, so
believing, we found rest to our souls; we found that His word was true,
and that His taking away our sins was a reality.
Some give their lives to Him then and there, and go forth to live
thenceforth not at all unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them.
This is as it should be, for conversion and consecration ought to be
simultaneous. But practically it is not very often so, except with those
in whom the bringing out of darkness into marvellous light has been
sudden and dazzling, and full of deepest contrasts. More frequently the
work resembles the case of the Hebrew servant described in Exodus xxi.,
who, after six years' experience of a good master's service, dedicates
himself voluntarily, unreservedly, and irrevocably to it, saying, 'I love
my master; I will not go out free;' the master then accepting and sealing
him to a life-long service, free in law, yet bound in love. This seems to
be a figure of later consecration founded on experience and love.
And yet, as at our first coming, it is less than nothing, worse than
nothing that we have to bring; for our lives, even our redeemed and
pardoned lives, are not only weak and worthless, but defiled and sinful.
But thanks be to God for the Altar that sanctifieth the gift, even our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself! By Him we draw nigh unto God; to Him, as one
with the Father, we offer our living sacrifice; in Him, as the Beloved of
the Father, we know it is accepted. So, dear friends, when once He has
wrought in us the desire to be altogether His own, and put into our
hearts the prayer, 'Take my life,' let us go on our way rejoicing,
believing that He _has_ taken our lives, our hands, our feet, our voices,
our intellects, our wills, our whole selves, to be ever, only, all for
Him. Let us consider that a blessedly settled thing; not because of
anything we have felt, or said, or done, but because we know that He
heareth us, and because we know that He is true to His word.
But suppose our hearts do not condemn us in this matter, our
disappointment may arise from another cause. It may be that we have not
received, because we have not asked a fuller and further blessing.
Suppose that we did believe, thankfully and surely, that the Lord heard
our prayer, and that He did indeed answer and accept us, and set us apart
for Himself; and yet we find that our consecration was not merely
miserably incomplete, but that we have drifted back again almost to where
we were before. Or suppose things are not quite so bad as that, still we
have not quite all we expected; and even if we think we can truly say, 'O
God, my heart is fixed,' we find that, to our daily sorrow, somehow or
other the details of our conduct do not seem to be fixed, something or
other is perpetually slipping through, till we get perplexed and
distressed. Then we are tempted to wonder whether after all there was not
some mistake about it, and the Lord did not really take us at our word,
although we took Him at His word. And then the struggle with one doubt,
and entanglement, and temptation only seems to land us in another. What
is to be done then?
First, I think, very humbly and utterly honestly to search and try our
ways before our God, or rather, as we shall soon realize our helplessness
to make such a search, ask Him to do it for us, praying for His promised
Spirit to show us unmistakably if there is any secret thing with us that
is hindering both the inflow and outflow of His grace to us and through
us. Do not let us shrink from some unexpected flash into a dark corner;
do not let us wince at the sudden touching of a hidden plague-spot. The
Lord always does His own work thoroughly if we will only let Him do it;
if we put our case into His hands, He will search and probe fully and
firmly, though very tenderly. Very painfully, it may be, but only that He
may do the very thing we want,--cleanse us and heal us thoroughly, so
that we may set off to walk in real newness of life. But if we do not put
it unreservedly into His hands, it will be no use thinking or talking
about our lives being consecrated to Him. The heart that is not entrusted
to Him for searching, will not be undertaken by Him for cleansing; the
life that fears to come to the light lest any deed should be reproved,
can never know the blessedness and the privileges of walking in the
light.
But what then? When He has graciously again put a new song in our mouth,
and we are singing,
'Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like me His praise should sing?'
and again with fresh earnestness we are saying,
'Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee!'
are we only to look forward to the same disappointing experience over
again? are we always to stand at the threshold? Consecration is not so
much a step as a course; not so much an act, as a position to which a
course of action inseparably belongs. In so far as it is a course and a
position, there must naturally be a definite entrance upon it, and a
time, it may be a moment, when that entrance is made. That is when we
say, 'Take'; but we do not want to go on taking a first step over and
over again. What we want now is to be maintained in that position, and to
fulfil that course. So let us go on to another prayer. Having already
said, 'Take my life, for I cannot give it to Thee,' let us now say, with
deepened conviction, that without Christ we really can do nothing,--'Keep
my life, for I cannot keep it for Thee.'
Let us ask this with the same simple trust to which, in so many other
things, He has so liberally and graciously responded. For this is the
confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His
will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask,
we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. There can be
no doubt that this petition is according to His will, because it is based
upon many a promise. May I give it to you just as it floats through my
own mind again and again, knowing whom I have believed, and being
persuaded that He is _able to keep_ that which I have committed unto Him?
Keep my life, that it may be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Keep my moments and my days;
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Keep my hands, that they may move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Keep my feet, that they may be
Swift and 'beautiful' for Thee.
Keep my voice, that I may sing
Always, only, for my King.
Keep my lips, that they may be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Keep my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.
Keep my intellect, and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Keep my will, oh, keep it Thine!
For it is no longer mine.
Keep my heart; it _is_ Thine own;
It is now Thy royal throne.
Keep my love; my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure-store.
Keep myself, that I may be
Ever, _only_, ALL for Thee.
Yes! He who is able and willing to take unto Himself, is no less able and
willing to keep for Himself. Our willing offering has been made by His
enabling grace, and this our King has 'seen with joy.' And now we pray,
'Keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of
Thy people' (1 Chron. xxix. 17, 18).
This blessed 'taking,' once for all, which we may quietly believe as an
accomplished fact, followed by the continual 'keeping,' for which He will
be continually inquired of by us, seems analogous to the great washing by
which we have part in Christ, and the repeated washing of the feet for
which we need to be continually coming to Him. For with the deepest and
sweetest consciousness that He has indeed taken our lives to be His very
own, the need of His active and actual keeping of them in every detail
and at every moment is most fully realized. But then we have the promise
of our faithful God, 'I the Lord _do_ keep it, I will keep it night and
day.' The only question is, will we trust this promise, or will we not?
If we do, we shall find it come true. If not, of course it will not be
realized. For unclaimed promises are like uncashed cheques; they will
keep us from bankruptcy, but not from want. But if not, _why_ not? What
right have we to pick out one of His faithful sayings, and say we don't
expect Him to fulfil that? What defence can we bring, what excuse can we
invent, for so doing?
If you appeal to experience against His faithfulness to His word, I will
appeal to experience too, and ask you, did you ever _really trust_ Jesus
to fulfil any word of His to you, and find your trust deceived? As to the
past experience of the details of your life not being kept for Jesus,
look a little more closely at it, and you will find that though you may
have asked, you did not trust. Whatever you did really trust Him to keep,
He has kept, and the unkept things were never really entrusted.
Scrutinize this past experience as you will, and it will only bear
witness against your unfaithfulness, never against His absolute
faithfulness.
Yet this witness must not be unheeded. We must not forget the things that
are behind till they are confessed and forgiven. Let us now bring all
this unsatisfactory past experience, and, most of all, the want of trust
which has been the poison-spring of its course, to the precious blood of
Christ, which cleanseth us, even us, from all sin, even this sin. Perhaps
we never saw that we were not trusting Jesus as He deserves to be
trusted; if so, let us wonderingly hate ourselves the more that we could
be so trustless to such a Saviour, and so sinfully dark and stupid that
we did not even see it. And oh, let us wonderingly love Him the more that
He has been so patient and gentle with us, upbraiding not, though in our
slow-hearted foolishness we have been grieving Him by this subtle
unbelief, and then, by His grace, may we enter upon a new era of
experience, our lives kept for Him more fully than ever before, because
we trust Him more simply and unreservedly to keep them!
Here we must face a question, and perhaps a difficulty. Does it not
almost seem as if we were at this point led to trusting to our trust,
making everything hinge upon it, and thereby only removing a subtle
dependence upon ourselves one step farther back, disguising instead of
renouncing it? If Christ's keeping depends upon our trusting, and our
continuing to trust depends upon ourselves, we are in no better or safer
position than before, and shall only be landed in a fresh series of
disappointments. The old story, something for the sinner to _do_, crops
up again here, only with the ground shifted from 'works' to trust. Said a
friend to me, 'I see now! I did trust Jesus to do everything else for me,
but I thought that this trusting was something that _I_ had got to do.'
And so, of course, what she 'had got to do' had been a perpetual effort
and frequent failure. We can no more trust and keep on trusting than we
can do anything else of ourselves. Even in this it must be 'Jesus only';
we are not to look to Him only to be the Author and Finisher of our
faith, but we are to look to Him for all the intermediate fulfilment of
the work of faith (2 Thess. i. 11); we must ask Him to go on fulfilling
it in us, committing even this to His power.
For we both may and must
Commit our very faith to Him,
Entrust to him our trust.
What a long time it takes us to come down to the conviction, and still
more to the realization of the fact that without Him we can do _nothing_,
but that He must work _all_ our works in us! This is the work of God,
that ye believe in Him whom He has sent. And no less must it be the work
of God that we go on believing, and that we go on trusting. Then, dear
friends, who are longing to trust Him with unbroken and unwavering trust,
cease the effort and drop the burden, and _now_ entrust your trust to
Him! He is just as well able to keep that as any other part of the
complex lives which we want Him to take and keep for Himself. And oh, do
not pass on content with the thought, 'Yes, that is a good idea; perhaps
I should find that a great help!' But, 'Now, then, _do it_.' It is no
help to the sailor to see a flash of light across a dark sea, if he does
not instantly steer accordingly.
Consecration is not a religiously selfish thing. If it sinks into that,
it ceases to be consecration. We want our lives kept, not that we may
feel happy, and be saved the distress consequent on wandering, and get
the power with God and man, and all the other privileges linked with it.
We shall have all this, because the lower is included in the higher; but
our true aim, if the love of Christ constraineth us, will be far beyond
this. Not for 'me' at all but 'for Jesus'; not for my safety, but for His
glory; not for my comfort, but for His joy; not that I may find rest, but
that He may see the travail of His soul, and be satisfied! Yes, for _Him_
I want to be kept. Kept for His sake; kept for His use; kept to be His
witness; kept for His joy! Kept for Him, that in me He may show forth
some tiny sparkle of His light and beauty; kept to do His will and His
work in His own way; kept, it may be, to suffer for His sake; kept for
Him, that He may do just what seemeth Him good with me; kept, so that no
other lord shall have any more dominion over me, but that Jesus shall
have all there is to have;--little enough, indeed, but not divided or
diminished by any other claim. Is not this, O you who love the Lord--is
not this worth living for, worth asking for, worth trusting for?
This is consecration, and I cannot tell you the blessedness of it. It is
not the least use arguing with one who has had but a taste of its
blessedness, and saying to him, 'How can these things be?' It is not the
least use starting all sorts of difficulties and theoretical suppositions
about it with such a one, any more than it was when the Jews argued with
the man who said, 'One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I
see.' The Lord Jesus does take the life that is offered to Him, and He
does keep the life for Himself that is entrusted to Him; but until the
life is offered we cannot know the taking, and until the life is
entrusted we cannot know or understand the keeping. All we can do is to
say, 'O taste and see!' and bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ,
and set to our seal that we have found Him true to His every word, and
that we have proved Him able even to do exceeding abundantly above all we
asked or thought. Why should we hesitate to bear this testimony? We have
done nothing at all; we have, in all our efforts, only proved to
ourselves, and perhaps to others, that we had no power either to give or
keep our lives. Why should we not, then, glorify His grace by
acknowledging that we have found Him so wonderfully and tenderly gracious
and faithful in both taking and keeping as we never supposed or imagined?
I shall never forget the smile and emphasis with which a poor working man
bore this witness to his Lord. I said to him, 'Well, H., we have a good
Master, have we not?' 'Ah,' said he, 'a deal better than ever _I_
thought!' That summed up his experience, and so it will sum up the
experience of every one who will but yield their lives wholly to the same
good Master.
I cannot close this chapter without a word with those, especially my
younger friends, who, although they have named the name of Christ, are
saying, 'Yes, this is all very well for some people, or for older people,
but I am not ready for it; I can't say I see my way to this sort of
thing.' I am going to take the lowest ground for a minute, and appeal to
_your_ 'past experience.' Are you satisfied with your experience of the
other 'sort of thing'? Your pleasant pursuits, your harmless recreations,
your nice occupations, even your improving ones, what fruit are you
having from them? Your social intercourse, your daily talks and walks,
your investments of all the time that remains to you over and above the
absolute duties God may have given you, what fruit that shall remain have
you from all this? Day after day passes on, and year after year, and what
shall the harvest be? What is even the present return? Are you getting
any real and lasting satisfaction out of it all? Are you not finding that
things lose their flavour, and that you are spending your strength day
after day for nought? that you are no more satisfied than you were a year
ago--rather less so, if anything? Does not a sense of hollowness and
weariness come over you as you go on in the same round, perpetually
getting through things only to begin again? It cannot be otherwise. Over
even the freshest and purest earthly fountains the Hand that never makes
a mistake has written, 'He that drinketh of this water shall thirst
again.' Look into your own heart and you will find a copy of that
inscription already traced, '_Shall thirst again_.' And the characters
are being deepened with every attempt to quench the inevitable thirst and
weariness in life, which can only be satisfied and rested in full
consecration to God. For 'Thou hast made us _for Thyself_, and the heart
never resteth till it findeth rest in Thee.' To-day I tell you of a
brighter and happier life, whose inscription is, '_Shall never
thirst_,'--a life that is no dull round-and-round in a circle of
unsatisfactorinesses, but a life that has found its true and entirely
satisfactory centre, and set itself towards a shining and entirely
satisfactory goal, whose brightness is cast over every step of the way.
Will you not seek it?
Do not shrink, and suspect, and hang back from what it may involve, with
selfish and unconfiding and ungenerous half-heartedness. Take the word of
any who have willingly offered themselves unto the Lord, that the life of
consecration is 'a deal better than they thought!' Choose this day whom
you will serve with real, thorough-going, whole-hearted service, and He
will receive you; and you will find, as we have found, that He is such a
good Master that you are satisfied with His goodness, and that you will
never want to go out free. Nay, rather take His own word for it; see what
He says: 'If they obey and serve Him, they shall spend their days in
prosperity, and their years in pleasures.' You cannot possibly understand
that till you are really _in_ His service! For He does not give, nor even
show, His wages before you enter it. And He says, 'My servants shall sing
for joy of heart.' But you cannot try over that song to see what it is
like, you cannot even read one bar of it, till your nominal or even
promised service is exchanged for real and undivided consecration. But
when He can call you 'My servant,' then you will find yourself singing
for joy of heart, because He says you shall.
'And who, then, is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the
Lord?'
'Do not startle at the term, or think, because you do not understand all
it may include, you are therefore not qualified for it. I dare say it
comprehends a great deal more than either you or I understand, but we can
both enter into the spirit of it, and the detail will unfold itself as
long as our probation shall last. Christ demands a hearty consecration in
_will_, and He will teach us what that involves in _act_.'
This explains the paradox that 'full consecration' may be in one sense
the act of a moment, and in another the work of a lifetime. It must be
complete to be real, and yet if real, it is always incomplete; a point of
rest, and yet a perpetual progression.
Suppose you make over a piece of ground to another person. You give it
up, then and there, entirely to that other; it is no longer in your own
possession; you no longer dig and sow, plant and reap, at your discretion
or for your own profit. His occupation of it is total; no other has any
right to an inch of it; it is his affair thenceforth what crops to
arrange for and how to make the most of it. But his practical occupation
of it may not appear all at once. There may be waste land which he will
take into full cultivation only by degrees, space wasted for want of
draining or by over fencing, and odd corners lost for want of enclosing;
fields yielding smaller returns than they might because of hedgerows too
wide and shady, and trees too many and spreading, and strips of good soil
trampled into uselessness for want of defined pathways.
Just so is it with our lives. The transaction of, so to speak, making
them over to God is definite and complete. But then begins the practical
development of consecration. And here He leads on 'softly, according as
the children be able to endure.' I do not suppose any one sees anything
like all that it involves at the outset. We have not a notion what an
amount of waste of power there has been in our lives; we never measured
out the odd corners and the undrained bits, and it never occurred to us
what good fruit might be grown in our straggling hedgerows, nor how the
shade of our trees has been keeping the sun from the scanty crops. And
so, season by season, we shall be sometimes not a little startled, yet
always very glad, as we find that bit by bit the Master shows how much
more may be made of our ground, how much more He is able to make of it
than we did; and we shall be willing to work under Him and do exactly
what He points out, even if it comes to cutting down a shady tree, or
clearing out a ditch full of pretty weeds and wild-flowers.
As the seasons pass on, it will seem as if there was always more and more
to be done; the very fact that He is constantly showing us something more
to be done in it, proving that it is really His ground. Only let Him
_have_ the ground, no matter how poor or overgrown the soil may be, and
then 'He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the
garden of the Lord.' Yes, even _our_ 'desert'! And then we shall sing,
'My beloved has gone down into _His_ garden, to the beds of spices, to
feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.'
Made for Thyself, O God!
Made for Thy love, Thy service, Thy delight;
Made to show forth Thy wisdom, grace, and might;
Made for Thy praise, whom veiled archangels laud:
Oh, strange and glorious thought, that we may be
A joy to Thee!
Yet the heart turns away
From this grand destiny of bliss, and deems
'Twas made for its poor self, for passing dreams,
Chasing illusions melting day by day,
Till for ourselves we read on this world's best,
'This is not rest!'