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Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing
yourself, to bring your purposes and desires and inclinations into sub-
mission to the will of God; but if you are “willing to be made willing,”
God will accomplish the work for you, even “casting down imagina-
tions, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5
. Then you will “work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you
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both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”
Philippians 2:12, 13
.
But many are attracted by the beauty of Christ and the glory of
heaven, who yet shrink from the conditions by which alone these can
become their own. There are many in the broad way who are not fully
satisfied with the path in which they walk. They long to break from
the slavery of sin, and in their own strength they seek to make a stand
against their sinful practices. They look toward the narrow way and the
strait gate; but selfish pleasure, love of the world, pride, unsanctified
ambition, place a barrier between them and the Saviour. To renounce
their own will, their chosen objects of affection or pursuit, requires a
sacrifice at which they hesitate and falter and turn back. Many “will
seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”
Luke 13:24
. They desire the
good, they make some effort to obtain it; but they do not choose it;
they have not a settled purpose to secure it at the cost of all things.
The only hope for us if we would overcome is to unite our will
to God’s will and work in co-operation with Him, hour by hour and
day by day. We cannot retain self and yet enter the kingdom of God.
If we ever attain unto holiness, it will be through the renunciation of
self and the reception of the mind of Christ. Pride and self-sufficiency
must be crucified. Are we willing to pay the price required of us? Are
we willing to have our will brought into perfect conformity to the will
of God? Until we are willing, the transforming grace of God cannot
be manifest upon us.
The warfare which we are to wage is the “good fight of faith.” “I
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also labor,” said the apostle Paul, “striving according to His working,
which worketh in me mightily.”
Colossians 1:29
.
Jacob, in the great crisis of his life, turned aside to pray. He was
filled with one overmastering purpose—to seek for transformation
of character. But while he was pleading with God, an enemy, as he
supposed, placed his hand upon him, and all night he wrestled for his
life. But the purpose of his soul was not changed by peril of life itself.