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Part 10
Here, again, is the word
of the Lord: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know
my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me." Psalm
139:23, 24. That is the word given to us for today and for all time.
Another word goes right along with it: "0 Lord, thou hast searched
me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising...and
art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue,
but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind
and before, and laid thine hand upon me." Another translation has
it: "Thou has compassed me all around; and holdest thine hand over
me." Verses 1-5. That is a fact. He has compassed us all around,
and his hand is over us. Whether we accept it or not, is another
matter; but that is the fact with every man in all this wide world. That
is how it is that all things an naked and opened unto the eyes of him
with whom we have to do.
Then when it is a fact that he has searched us, and
known us, and does search out and know us all the time, why not accept
it as a fact, and have the benefit of it? Why not present to him the
word, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my
thoughts"? What for?— "And see if there be any wicked way in
me." 0, that sets me before his face; for his glorious eyes of
light to look upon me, and to shine through me, as the fire, searching
out if there be any wicked way in me! And having searched it out, and
being a consuming fire, he consumes it all away, and leads me in the way
everlasting.
So, then, the sure way to escape the flaming fire of that
great day is to welcome that flaming fire this day.
Therefore, I say again, Let it never escape from your thought that
"our God is a consuming fire;" and that the sure way to escape
from that consuming fire in that great day when there will be no
chance to change, and no time to choose, is to choose today
the blessed change that is wrought, by welcoming freely, gladly, into
the life, our God, who is a consuming fire.
I remember the word that was spoken to Moses. As Moses
had come nearer and nearer to God, he said at last: "I beseech
thee, show me thy glory." That is exactly what appears in the
coming great day that is at hand: he comes "in the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory." His glory covers the heavens in that
day, and the earth is filled with his praise. In that day he is
"wrapped in a blaze of boundless glory," "and every eye
shall see him." But who shall endure it? That is the question; and
the answer is: Only those who have prayed, and now pray, that Christian
prayer, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory."
Moses
prayed a Christian prayer. |