Abide In Christ # 4

All You Who Have Come to Him (continued)

And it may please Thee, blessed Saviour, indeed, to speak to us; let each of us hear Thy blessed voice. May the feeling of our deep need, and the faith of Thy wondrous love,combined with the sight of the wonderfully blessed life Thou art waiting to bestow upon us, constrain us to listen and to obey, as often as Thou speakest: "Abide in me." Let day by day the answer from our hearts be clearer and fuller: "Blessed Saviour, I do abide in Thee."

And You Shall Find Rest to Your Souls

"Come unto me, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; and ye shall find rest to your souls" (Matthew  xl: 28, 29)

Rest for the soul: Such was the first promise with which the Saviour sought to win the heavy-laden sinner. Simple though it appears, the promise is indeed as large and comprehensive as can be found. Rest for the soul- does it not imply deliverance from every fear, the supply of every want, the fulfillment of every desire? And now nothing less than this is the prize with which the Saviour woos back the wandering one - who is mourning that the rest has not been so abiding or so full as it had hoped - to come back and abide in Him. Nothing but this was the reason that the rest has either not been found, or , if found, has been disturbed or lost again: you did not abide with, you did not abide in Him.

Have you ever noticed how, in the original invitation of the Saviour to come to Him, the promise of rest was repeated twice, with such a variation in the conditions as might have suggested that abiding rest could only be found in abiding nearness. First the Saviour says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest"; the very moment you come, and believe, I will give you rest - the rest pardon and acceptance - the rest in my love. But we know that all that God bestows needs time to become fully our own; it must be held fast, and appropriated, and assimilated into our inmost being; without this not even Christ's giving can make it  it our very own, in full experience and enjoyment. And so the Saviour repeats His promise, in words which clearly speak not so much His promise, in words, which clearly speak not so much of the initial rest with which He welcomes the weary one who comes, but of the deeper and personally appropriate rest of the soul that abides with Him. He now not only says, a"Come unto me," but "Take my yoke upon yourselves to my training, submit in all things to my will let your whole life be one with mine - in other words, Abide in me. And then He adds, not only, "I will give," but "ye shall find find rest to your souls. "The rest He found and made your very own - the deeper the abiding rest which comes from longer acquaintance and closer fellowship, from entire surrender and deeper symphony. "Take my yoke, and learn from me," "Abide in me" - this is the path to abiding rest.

~Andrew Murray~

(continued with # 5)