Our Wills kept for Jesus.
_'Keep my will, oh, keep it Thine,_
_For it is no longer mine.'_
Perhaps there is no point in which expectation has been so limited by
experience as this. We believe God is able to do for us just so much as
He has already done, and no more. We take it for granted a line must be
drawn somewhere; and so we choose to draw it where experience ends, and
faith would have to begin. Even if we have trusted and proved Him as to
keeping our members and our minds, faith fails when we would go deeper
and say, 'Keep my will!' And yet the only reason we have to give is, that
though we have asked Him to take our will, we do not exactly find that it
is altogether His, but that self-will crops up again and again. And
whatever flaw there might be in this argument, we think the matter is
quite settled by the fact that some whom we rightly esteem, and who are
far better than ourselves, have the same experience, and do not even seem
to think it right to hope for anything better. That is conclusive! And
the result of this, as of every other faithless conclusion, is either
discouragement and depression, or, still worse, acquiescence in an
unyielded will, as something that can't be helped.
Now let us turn from our thoughts to God's thoughts. Verily, they are not
as ours! He says He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think. Apply this here. We ask Him to take our wills and make them
His. Does He or does He not mean what He says? and if He does, should we
not trust Him to do this thing that we have asked and longed for, and not
less but more? 'Is _anything_ too hard for the Lord?' 'Hath He said, and
shall He not do it?' and if He gives us faith to believe that we have the
petition that we desired of Him, and with it the unspeakable rest of
leaning our will wholly upon His love, what ground have we for imagining
that this is _necessarily_ to be a mere fleeting shadow, which is hardly
to last an hour, but is _necessarily_ to be exhausted ere the next breath
of trial or temptation comes? Does He mock our longing by acting as I
have seen an older person act to a child, by accepting some trifling gift
of no intrinsic value, just to please the little one, and then throwing
it away as soon as the child's attention is diverted? Is not the taking
rather the pledge of the keeping, if we will but entrust Him fearlessly
with it? We give Him no opportunity, so to speak, of proving His
faithfulness to this great promise, because we _will_ not fulfil the
condition of reception, believing it. But we readily enough believe
instead all that we hear of the unsatisfactory experience of others! Or,
start from another word. Job said, 'I know that Thou canst do
everything,' and we turn round and say, 'Oh yes, everything _except_
keeping my will!' Dare we add, 'And I know that Thou canst not do that'?
Yet that is what is said every day, only in other words; and if not said
aloud, it is said in faithless hearts, and God hears it. What _does_
'Almighty' mean, if it does not mean, as we teach our little children,
'able to do _everything'?_
We have asked this great thing many a time, without, perhaps, realizing
how great a petition we were singing, in the old morning hymn, 'Guard my
first springs of thought and will!' That goes to the root of the matter,
only it implies that the will has been already surrendered to Him, that
it may be wholly kept and guarded.
It may be that we have not sufficiently realized the sin of the only
alternative. Our wills belong either to self or to God. It may seem a
small and rather excusable sin in man's sight to be self-willed, but see
in what a category of iniquity God puts it! (2 Pet. ii. 10). And
certainly we are without excuse when we have such a promise to go upon
as, 'It is God that worketh in you both to _will_ and to do of His
pleasure.' How splendidly this meets our very deepest
helplessness,--'worketh in you to _will!_' Oh, let us pray for ourselves
and for each other, that we may know 'what is the exceeding greatness of
His power to usward who believe.' It does not say, 'to usward who fear
and doubt;' for if we will not believe, neither shall we be established.
If we will not believe what God says He can do, we shall see it with our
eyes, but we shall not eat thereof. 'They _could_ not enter in because of
unbelief.'
It is most comforting to remember that the grand promise, 'Thy people
shall be willing in the day of Thy power,' is made by the Father to
Christ Himself. The Lord Jesus holds this promise, and God will fulfil it
to Him. He will make us willing because He has promised Jesus that He
will do so. And what is being made willing, but having our will taken and
kept?
All true surrender of the will is based upon love and knowledge of, and
confidence in, the one to whom it is surrendered. We have the human
analogy so often before our eyes, that it is the more strange we should
be so slow to own even the possibility of it as to God. Is it thought
anything so very extraordinary and high-flown, when a bride deliberately
_prefers_ wearing a colour which was not her own taste or choice, because
her husband likes to see her in it? Is it very unnatural that it is no
distress to her to do what he asks her to do, or to go with him where he
asks her to come, even without question or explanation, instead of doing
what or going where she would undoubtedly have preferred if she did not
know and love him? Is it very surprising if this lasts beyond the wedding
day, and if year after year she still finds it her greatest pleasure to
please him, quite irrespective of what _used_ to be her own ways and
likings? Yet in this case she is not helped by any promise or power on
his part to make her wish what he wishes. But He who so wonderfully
condescends to call Himself the Bridegroom of His church, and who claims
our fullest love and trust, has promised and has power to work in us to
will. Shall we not claim His promise and rely on His mighty power, and
say, not self-confidently, but looking only unto Jesus--
'Keep my will, for it is Thine;
It shall be no longer mine!'
Only in proportion as our own will is surrendered, are we able to discern
the splendour of God's will.
For oh! it is a splendour,
A glow of majesty,
A mystery of beauty
If we will only see;
A very cloud of glory
Enfolding you and me.
A splendour that is lighted
At one transcendent flame,
The wondrous Love, the perfect Love,
Our Father's sweetest name;
For His Name and very Essence
And His Will are all the same!
Conversely, in proportion as we see this splendour of His will, we shall
more readily or more fully surrender our own. Not until we have presented
our bodies a living sacrifice can we prove what is that good, and
perfect, and acceptable will of God. But in thus proving it, this
continual presentation will be more and more seen to be our reasonable
service, and becomes more and more a joyful sacrifice of praise.
The connection in Romans xii. 1, 2, between our sacrifice which He so
graciously calls acceptable to Himself, and our finding out that His will
is acceptable to ourselves, is very striking. One reason for this
connection may be that only love can really understand love, and love on
both sides is at the bottom of the whole transaction and its results.
First, He loves us. Then the discovery of this leads us to love Him.
Then, because He loves us, He claims us, and desires to have us wholly
yielded to His will, so that the operations of love in and for us may
find no hindrance. Then, because we love Him we recognise His claim and
yield ourselves. Then, being thus yielded, He draws us nearer to
Him,[footnote: 'Now ye _have_ consecrated yourselves unto the Lord, come
_near_' (2 Chron. xxix. 31).] and admits us, so to speak, into closer
intimacy, so that we gain nearer and truer views of His perfections. Then
the unity of these perfections becomes clearer to us. Now we not only see
His justice and mercy flowing in an undivided stream from the cross of
Christ, but we see that they never were divided, though the strange
distortions of the dark, false glass of sin made them appear so, but that
both are but emanations of God's holy love. Then having known and
believed this holy love, we see further that His will is not a separate
thing, but only love (and therefore all His attributes) in action; love
being the primary essence of His being, and all the other attributes
manifestations and combinations of that ineffable essence, for God _is_
Love. Then this will of God which has seemed in old far-off days a stern
and fateful power, is seen to be only love energized; love saying, 'I
will.' And when once we really grasp this (hardly so much by faith as by
love itself), the will of God cannot be otherwise than acceptable, for it
is no longer a question of trusting that somehow or other there is a
hidden element of love in it, but of understanding that it _is_ love; no
more to be dissociated from it than the power of the sun's rays can be
dissociated from their light and warmth. And love recognised must surely
be love accepted and reciprocated. So, as the fancied sternness of God's
will is lost in His love, the stubbornness of our will becomes melted in
that love, and lost in our acceptance of it.
'Take Thine own way with me, dear Lord,
Thou canst not otherwise than bless;
I launch me forth upon a sea
Of boundless love and tenderness.
'I could not choose a larger bliss
Than to be wholly Thine; and mine
A will whose highest joy is this,
To ceaselessly unclasp in Thine.
'I will not fear Thee, O my God!
The days to come can only bring
Their perfect sequences of love,
Thy larger, deeper comforting.
'Within the shadow of this love,
Loss doth transmute itself to gain;
Faith veils earth's sorrows in its light,
And straightway lives above her pain.
'We are not losers thus; we share
The perfect gladness of the Son,
Not conquered--for, behold, we reign;
Conquered and Conqueror are one.
'Thy wonderful grand will, my God!
Triumphantly I make it mine;
And faith shall breathe her glad "Amen"
To every dear command of Thine.
'Beneath the splendour of Thy choice,
Thy perfect choice for me, I rest;
Outside it now I dare not live,
Within it I must needs be blest.
'Meanwhile my spirit anchors calm
In grander regions still than this;
The fair, far-shining latitudes
Of that yet unexplored bliss.
'Then may Thy perfect, glorious will
Be evermore fulfilled in me,
And make my life an answ'ring chord
Of glad, responsive harmony.
'Oh! it is life indeed to live
Within this kingdom strangely sweet,
And yet we fear to enter in,
And linger with unwilling feet.
'We fear this wondrous rule of Thine,
Because we have not reached Thy heart;
Not venturing our all on Thee,
We may not know how good Thou art.'
Jean Sophia Pigott.