'The Lord direct you.' I have already explained that we have here a
distinct address to Jesus Christ as divine, and the hearer of prayer.
The Apostle evidently expects a present, personal influence from Christ
to be exerted upon men's hearts. And this is the point to which I desire
to draw your attention in a word or two. We are far too oblivious of the
present influence of Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, upon the hearts of men
that trust Him. We have very imperfectly apprehended our privileges as
Christians if our faith do not expect, and if our experience have not
realised, the inward guidance of Christ moment by moment in our daily
lives. I believe that much of the present feebleness of the Christian
life amongst its professors is to be traced to the fact that their
thoughts about Jesus Christ are predominantly thoughts of what He did
nineteen centuries ago, and that the proportion of faith is not observed
in their perspective of His work, and that they do not sufficiently
realise that to-day, here, in you and me, if we have faith in Him, He
is verily and really putting forth His power.
Paul's prayer is but an echo of Christ's promise. The Master said, 'He
shall guide you into all truth.' The servant prays, 'The Lord direct
your hearts into the love of God.' And if we rightly know the whole
blessedness that is ours in the gift of Jesus Christ, we shall recognise
His present guidance as a reality in our lives.
That guidance is given to us mainly by the Divine Spirit laying upon our
hearts the great facts which evoke our answering love to God. 'We love
Him because He first loved us'; and the way by which Jesus directs our
hearts into the love of God is mainly by shedding abroad God's love to
us in our spirits by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.
But, besides that, all these movements in our hearts so often neglected,
so often resisted, by which we are impelled to a holier life, to a
deeper love, to a more unworldly consecration--all these, rightly
understood, are Christ's directions. He leads us, though often we know
not the hand that guides; and every Christian may be sure of this--and
he is sinful if he does not live up to the height of his
privileges--that the ancient promises are more than fulfilled in his
experience, and that he has a present Christ, an indwelling Christ, who
will be his Shepherd, and lead him by green pastures and still waters
sometimes and through valleys of darkness and rough defiles sometimes,
but always with the purpose of bringing him nearer and nearer to the
full possession of the love of God and the patience of Christ.
The vision which shone before the eyes of the father of the forerunner,
was that 'the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to guide our feet
into the way of peace.' It is fulfilled in Jesus who directs our hearts
into love and patience, which are the way of peace.
We are not to look for impressions and impulses distinguishable from the
operations of our own inward man. We are not to fall into the error of
supposing that a conviction of duty or a conception of truth is of
divine origin because it is strong. But the true test of their divine
origin is their correspondence with the written word, the standard of
truth and life. Jesus guides us to a fuller apprehension of the great
facts of the infinite love of God in the Cross. Shedding abroad a
Saviour's love does kindle ours.