01.01. Going In To God
Chapter 1- GOING IN TO GOD
We must go IN to feed on the Word.
This book tells you of the cleansing of your soul from the deepest-dyed stains of guilt; of its redemption from darkness and death to light and eternal life in Jesus Christ: of your right to sonship of God by faith in Christ Jesus: of the indwelling of God’s own eternal Spirit within you: of strength to resist the fiercest temptations which may assail you: of power to serve in all the life work to which God has called you: of joy and peace amid tribulation and suffering: of deliverance from this body of sinful flesh into a body like unto that of His radiant glory: of the overthrow and destruction of the great enemy of your soul: of the coming of your Lord and King in all the glory of His holy angels: of His triumphant and splendid reign upon a redeemed and glorified earth: of the glad day when God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes and the tabernacle of God shall be with men: and of the everlasting, changeless, blissful ages of eternity through which you shall live in the face to face presence of your Lord and in the ceaseless joy of His service and will in the universe. Can you neglect such pastures of tender grass as these? Can you afford not to go in and brood over such a Book until it fires your soul for your King and sends you forth with burning heart to do His will among lost, sinning men, and hasten the glorious day of His appearing? While the men and women who feed upon the dry, juiceless husks of the world are starving in soul and spirit, the child of God who feeds upon this book will grow strong and rich, and as he thus “goes in” shall find pasture such as the world doth never feed upon.
We must go IN to drink of the Spirit.
“Be not drunken with wine, but be filled with the Spirit,” is God’s striking word in Eph 5:18. What is it to drink wine? It is to open the body to wine, which thereupon fills us. What is it to drink of the Spirit? It is to open the soul to the Spirit, which thereupon fills us. The great truth here is this: Whatever we open to fills us. If we open the body to wine it fills. When we open the soul to God the Spirit fills. This is what communion does. It opens the soul to God. He who goes in: he who waits upon God in the secret place as literally opens his soul to the inflow of God’s own spiritual life as the wine-drinker opens his lips to the inflow of wine. Here is a Christian man. He goes to his doorstep Sunday morning and picks up the Sunday paper. He begins to read. That is, he opens his mind to the subject matter. Hour after hour he reads. At the end of that time he is filled with its contents. Then he goes to church. But the best sermon his pastor may preach cannot drive out from his being the things of the world which now possess him. That to which he opened has filled. But suppose he starts the day in a different fashion. Suppose he goes in to the secret place of prayer. He bows over the Word of God. He prays in faith to God: He waits in silence before God, believing that “They which wait upon the Lord shall change their strength.” Such a man opens his soul to God. And He to whom he opens fills him. As surely as he was before filled with the spirit of the world to which he opened, so is he filled with the Spirit of God before whom he waits. And the days in which he does this he will be conscious of a new quietness, peace, and power in his daily life. For this is what it is to drink not of wine, but of the Spirit.
We must go IN to keep from choking.
Here is a submarine diver. He dons his brazen helmet and leaden shoes and sinks beneath the surface of the sea. Now God never created him to live beneath the water. And if the element which surrounds him should break through his helmet, it would instantly suffocate him. He is a creature of God’s free air above. He must have that to live. So up above him men keep steadily pumping down fresh air through a rubber tube to keep him alive, while he plies his dangerous calling. Is not this a picture of our spiritual dangers and needs? We are born from above. We belong to another world. Our life is hid with Christ in God. We move constantly in a worldly atmosphere which, like the water encompassing the diver, chokes and suffocates the soul when it breaks through and fills it. There is only one remedy. “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” We must live like the undersea diver. We must draw our daily life from God, through Christ. And this we do in the secret place. It is as we go in to the hidden place with God and learn the secret of communion with Him that we are saved from the suffocating choke-damp of the worldly atmosphere in which we are compelled to move. What a striking word is that of our Lord’s upon this very truth. “The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, choke the Word.” Cares, riches, fleshly desires - these are the deadly trio of Word-chokers! As these surge into a man’s life they suffocate it. It becomes like the snowy lily standing in its spotless whiteness until the weeds and thorns creep in about its roots, and then it bows, and droops, and withers under the deadly choking of its foes. If the curtain could be lifted from the lives of thousands of busy, feverish Christian men, immersed in these things, they would be seen gasping for spiritual breath, throttled by the clutch of these spiritual foes.
It does not take LONG to go IN.
Perhaps as we speak you are thinking of long intervals of devotion and communion with your Lord. You picture the secret closet of prayer where men spend hours with Him. You dream of some mountain top where in the stillness of the desert place God speaks so clearly to your inner soul as you are shut off from men. You think of the cloistered depths of the forest where there is no sound but the twitter of the birds and the drone of insects, and where the tree-tops through which you worship weave quaint patterns against the back-ground of God’s own sky. And well is it for you if you have such places and such hours to go in to God. Our Lord had such, and many of them. But a man does not need these to go in. Nor, in the busy whirl and rush of life, can he always have them, even if he would. And so God is so near, and the arrows of prayer so swift in their course, and our Father so waitingly intent for every cry of prayer that starts on its upward way, that it does not take long to go in. In an instant of doubt: at the first pang of distress: with the first mis-step of a mistaken course: in the first second of a fierce temptation, we may go in. Amid the rush of traffic, the fever of a hurried day, the pressure of a strained and suffering one you may go in, if for but a second or two of precious approach. You may lift your heart in it all and whisper-”God help me; deliver me: give me strength: guide me: suffer not my foot to slip.” And He will hear you. And you will learn the sweet lesson of how quickly and how easily we may go in, in this so sorely needful life of prayer.