Pilgrim Ways
"These all...confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth". (Hebrews 11:13)
Lord since we sing as pilgrims, O give us pilgrims' ways;
Low thoughts of self, befitting Proclaimers of Thy praise;
O make us each more holy, In spirit pure and meek;
More like to heavenly citizens, As more of heaven we speak.
(pp. 121-124 Footprints for Pilgrims)
Directly you know Christ you must follow Him. He traces out a path for us that does not allow of retreat in any way.
Christ never had a home down here: it was a wilderness to Him, it did not bear the stamp of His Father's heart. If there is a strange place to me, it ought to be the place where my Lord was crucified.
Ejaculatory (constant) prayer, the lifting up of the eye, and the realizing the eye of God continually upon us, is the great secret of spirituality in social intercourse. The deeply spiritual mind cannot be a great talker, because such is watching and cherishing the visits of the Spirit, ascending at intervals in all the secret acts of love and praise.
Now is the time to give up self: Christ's presence will be the place to have giving up of self owned in.
Can we say of any when going into their house, "That person brings me Christ" ? If one had paid a visit to Paul, would not one have come away with a fresh taste of Christ ? I have oftten come out of the house of a poor bedridden creature feeling, Oh, how I wish my soul were like that ! Oh, that that pulse of Christ were throbbing in every part of the body ! How I want, how I long, to see it so in all who are His.
The early Christians presented in a beautiful way the Nazirite character. They walked as those whose hearts Christ had taken away with Him into heaven.
So immensely are our lives below the mark as nominal Christians that we have next to no idea of the distance at which we walk from God, and when the soul is turned to seek ... Him only ... we discover with amazement how many false props we have had, and how often we have been leaning on the love and approbation of others and not upon a Father's love alone.
I find more and more the value of that word, "Enoch walked with God." I daresay in doing it he had his difficulties; but he did it.
That which I desire for you is fellowship with Jesus in that which distinguished Him so pre-eminently above His fellows -- repose of character .... How blessed and how unearthly the calm, quiet, unruffled composure of the course ! No haste, no hurry, because though on earth yet still in heaven; His mind, His heart, deep buried in His Father's love. And may we not thus abide in Christ, and Christ in us ?
Are you walking in the light of the affections of that Lord Jesus who loved you and washed you from your sins in His own blood ? Is that name of Jesus causing a vibration in your heart as you walk along the wilderness ?
--- G.V.W.
