How To Live A Beautiful Christian Life # 1
We have only successfully acquired the art of living a Christian life - when we have learned to apply the principles of true religion, and enjoy its help and comfort in our daily life. It is easy to join in devotional exercises, to quote Bible promises, to extol the beauty of the Scriptures; but there are many who do these things - whose religion utterly fails them in the very places and at the very times - when it ought to prove their staff and stay!
All of us must go out from the sweet services of the Sunday - into a week of very real and very commonplace life. We must mingle with people who are not angels. We must pass through experiences that will naturally worry and vex us. Those about us, either wittingly or unwittingly, annoy and try us. We must mingle with those who do not love Christ. We all meet many troubles and worries in ordinary week-day life. They are continual irritations and annoyances.
The problem is to live a beautiful Christian life - in the face of all these hindrances! How can we get through the tangled briers which grow along our path - without having our hands and feet torn by them? How can we live sweetly - amid the vexing and irritating things and the multitude of little worries and frets which infest our way, and which we cannot evade?
It is not enough merely to "get along" in any sort of way, to drag to the close of each long, wearisome day, happy when night comes to end the strife. Life should be a joy - and not a burden. We should live victoriously, ever master of our experiences, and not tossed by them like a leaf on the dashing waves. Every earnest Christian wants to live a truly beautiful life, whatever the circumstances may be.
A little child, when asked "what it was to be a Christian," replied, "For me, to be a Christian is to live as Jesus would live - and behave as Jesus would behave - if he were a little girl and lived at our house." No better definition of practical religion could be given. Each one of us is to live just as Jesus would - if he were living out our little life in the midst of its actual environment, standing all day just where we stand, mingling with the same people with whom we must mingle, and exposed to the very annoyances, trials and provocations to which we are exposed. We want to live a life that will please God, and that will bear witness on its face to the genuineness of our piety.
How can we do this? We must first recognize the fact that our life must be lived just in its own circumstances. We cannot at present change our surroundings. Whatever we are to make of our lives - must be made in the midst of our actual experiences. Here we must either win our victories - or suffer our defeats. We may thing our lot is especially hard - and may wish it were otherwise. We may wish that we had a life of ease and luxury, amid softer scenes, with no briers or thorns, no worries or provocations. Then we would be always gentle, patient, serene, trustful, happy. How delightful it would be - never to have a care, an irritation, a cross, a single vexing thing!
But meanwhile this fact remains - that our aspiration cannot be realized, and that whatever our life is to be made, beautiful or marred, we must make it just where we are. No restless discontent can change our lot. We cannot get into any "paradise" merely by longing for it. Other people may have other circumstances, possibly more pleasant than ours - but here are ours. We may as well settle this point at once, and accept the battle of life on this field - or else, while we are vainly wishing for a better chance, the opportunity for victory shall have passed.
The next thought is that the place in which we find ourselves is the place in which the Master desires us to live our life.
There is no haphazard in this world. God leads every one of his children by the right way. He knows where and under what influences each particular life will ripen best. One tree grows best in the sheltered valley, another by the water's edge,another on the bleak mountain-top swept by storms. There is always adaptation in nature. Every tree or plant is found in the locality where the conditions of its growth exist, and does God give more thought to trees and plants than to his own children? He places us amid the circumstances and experiences in which our life will grow and ripen the best. The peculiar discipline to which we are each subjected - is the discipline we each need to bring out in us the beauties and graces of true spiritual character. We are in the right school. We may think that we would ripen more quickly - in a more easy and luxurious life - but God knows what is best; He makes no mistakes.
There is a little fable which says that a primrose growing by itself in a shady corner of the garden, became discontented as it saw the other flowers in their mirthful beds in the sunshine, and begged to be moved to a more conspicuous place. Its prayer was granted. The gardener transplanted it to a more showy and sunny spot. It was greatly pleased - but there came a change over it immediately. Its blossoms lost much of their beauty and became pale and sickly. The hot sun caused them to faint and wither. So it prayed again to be taken back to its old place in the shade. The wise gardener knows best where to plant each flower, and so God, the divine Gardener, knows where His people will best grow into what he would have them to be. Some require the fierce storms, some will only thrive spiritually in the shadow of worldly adversity, and some come to ripeness more sweetly under the soft and gentle influences of prosperity, whose beauty, rough experiences would mar. He knows what is best for each one.
The next thought, is that it is possible to live a beautiful life anywhere. There is no position in this world in the allotment of providence, in which it is not possible to be a true Christian, exemplifying all the virtues of Christianity. The grace of Christ has in it, potency enough to enable us to live godly, wherever we are called to dwell. When God chooses a home for us - He fits us for its peculiar trials. There is a beautiful law of adaptation that runs through all God's providence. Animals made to dwell amide arctic snows are covered with warm furs. The camel's home is the desert, and a wondrous provision is made by which it can endure long journeys across the hot sands without drink. Birds are fitted for their flights in the air. Animals made to live among the mountain-crags, have feet prepared for climbing over the steep rocks.In all nature this law of special equipment and preparation for allotted places prevails.
~J. R. Miller~
continued with # 2
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