"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when
ye shall search for me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13
After the Lord has quickened our souls,
for a time we often go, shall I say, blundering on, not knowing there is a
Jesus. We think that the way of life is to keep God's commandments, obey the
law, cleanse ourselves from sin, reform our lives, and cultivate universal
holiness in thought, word, and action; and so we go, blundering and stumbling
on in darkness; and all the while never get a single step forward. But when the
Lord has suffered us to weary ourselves to find the door, and let us sink lower
and lower into the pit of guilt and ruin, from feeling that all our attempts to
extricate ourselves have only plunged us deeper and deeper, and the Spirit of
God opens up to the understanding and brings into the soul some spiritual
discovery of Jesus, and thus makes known that there is a Saviour, a Mediator,
and a way of escape--this is the grand turning-point in our lives, the first
opening in the valley of Achor of the door of hope.
And when the soul
has once seen that there is a Jesus, and once felt a measure of the power of
his resurrection, it never goes to any other quarter for pardon, justification,
and salvation. When the Spirit of God begins to open up with power in his
conscience that there is a Jesus, that he is the only Mediator, that the Son of
God has come down and taken a holy human nature into union with himself, and is
now at the right hand of the Father, it is the first break of day, the first
dawn of hope; and upon that bright spot does the shipwrecked soul fix his
longing eyes till the Sun of righteousness arises upon it with healing in his
wings. It is a great step in a man's experience to turn wholly and solely to
the Lord, and renounce all creature righteousness, all forms and ceremonies as
a way of salvation. It is a great mercy to turn away from them, as the
shipwrecked mariner turns away from his sinking ship, and looks to the rising
sun to shew him some way of escape, and thus afford him some gleam of hope.
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JC PHILPOT - 1802-1869
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