“OUR PORTION.”
BY W. L. G.
“What shall we have therefore?” –(St.
Matt. xix: 27.) This question, asked by Peter, is one that has doubtless been
asked in every age since, and today great multitudes of church members are
asking in their hearts, “What shall we have therefore?”
Could they realize that faith brings
Christ to them, and having Him they have all things needful, they would not ask
this question. “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or
the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;
and yea re Christ’s.” –(1 Cor. iii:21-23.)
Let these words sink deeply into
your hearts, -“Ye are Christ’s.” We can never realize that all things are ours,
until we are fully Christ’s, and when we know
that we are His and He is ours, we shall also realize that the “all things” in
Christ are ours.
A much more appropriate question
would be “What shall we do therefore?”
instead of “What shall we have?” How many there are whose joys are based on the
thought of what they shall have in the future world. They do not realize that
the Heavenly joys spring not from location or surroundings, but from a likeness
to God in the soul. When this likeness is fully engraven upon the heart, when
this happiness fully realized. “We shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
God, and God alone, is the source of all true happiness and in the lack of
likeness to Him there must ever be a lack of real joy.
In Him all fullness dwells, and He
has promised to come and abide in the hearts of those who will receive Him; and
having him we have His fullness.
What more can we ask? And why this
constant feeling that only in the future life is rest? It is because we do not
by faith receive Christ fully into our hearts. Were He fully accepted then
would the Lord’s prayer become a reality to us, “Thy will be don on earth as it
is in heaven.”
This full realization of His will entirely
shuts out the question, “What shall we have?” That conscious fullness which entirely
satisfies the soul, is ours. The unrest is gone. The all-absorbing question is,
How can we best serve our Lord? What shall we do, instead of have?
My friends, may you all accept
Christ thus, and having Him, earth will be a paradise; Heaven for you will
begun.
***
REDEMPTION.
Redeemed by Thee
Who paid or ransom price,
Shedding for us Thy precious blood
Divine,
Saviour we are no more our own, but
Thine;
Yet we
deserve not such a sacrifice:
To cancel
guilt would hecatombs suffice,
Or costly offerings of oil and wine
Atone for sin, for the least sin of
mine?
Nay, but Thy
blood which opened Paradise
To the poor, dying thief, atoned for
me,
Like him, if I look up in faith to Thee,
Thou too wilt save me from the guilt of sin,
And from its power, and make me pure within,
And when Thou
call’st me to resign my breath,
Redeem my spirit from the
power of death.
