Books: The Heart Cry of Jesus
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Byron J. Rees >> The Heart Cry of Jesus
HEROISM.
Whatever may be the matter under consideration the sanctified man
dares anything right. God is with him, and he feels His presence.
Right is right, and by the grace of God he will stand by it though
all the world howl and roar.
CHAPTER VII.
RESPONSIVENESS TO CHRIST.
A COAL AND A FLAME.
Among the results of the coming of the Comforter is an increase in
warm personal love for Jesus. Conversion plants divine love
(agape) in the heart, but sanctification quickens and intensifies
it. Conversion drops a coal into the breast; the fuller grace fans
it into a flame.
SOUNDING STRINGS.
There is a place in experience where Christ's voice sets the whole
being vibrating. The soul is so in tune with Him that the cadences
of His tones fill the soul with a tremor of glee and gladness. If
you sing the scale in a room where there is a piano the
corresponding strings of the instrument will sound. Thus it is
with Jesus and the sanctified soul. When Christ speaks the heart
answers spontaneously.
REGENERATION
Regeneration does much for us. But there is that even in the heart
of the regenerate which is antagonistic to Christ. The whole man
does not say instinctively, "Thy will be done"; yet there is
something within to which the Lord can appeal. Consult Peter. He
tells us of "exceeding great and precious promises by which we
become partakers of the Divine nature." We "take a part"
(partakers) of the divine Shekinah into our hearts. We are not
only "adopted" but born of God, and by a divine heredity we
possess His character.
SAMUEL.
We see this beautifully illustrated in the case of Samuel. Given
in covenant to God from his birth, and early taught the word of
the Lord, he possessed the changed heart and the attuned ear. When
God's voice fell out of the skies that night something in Samuel
heard what aged and mitred Eli could not hear. Eli had the theory
and reasoned out who the speaker must be, but the heart of Samuel
awoke intuitively at the sound of that voice.
THE VOICE FROM THE SKY.
As Jesus taught in the temple God spoke, and many whose ears were
dull because their hearts were hard and unchanged said, "It
thundered." Others saw that something extraordinary had occurred
and admitted that "an angel spoke to Him." But the disciples whose
"names were written in heaven," and who had regenerated hearts,
knew it was the voice of God.
THE FLINTY WORLD.
But while the child of God is in sympathy with God he must be
sanctified wholly to be fully, constantly and completely
responsive to Christ. Jesus wants a bride who will live His life
with Him and enter into all His plans and sorrows, ambitions and
trials, aims and purposes. There are many people who are glad
Jesus died for them who know nothing about "suffering with
Christ." Yet the Bible is filled with allusions to it. The
Heavenly Bridegroom wants a companion who will understand Him.
This cold, hard, flinty, wicked world does not. "He came unto His
own and His own received Him not." He knocked at the door of His
own vineyard and the husband-men said, "Come, let us kill the
Son." The divine Lord hungers for some one who will not misjudge
His purposes nor impute to Him base motives.
THE UNAPPRECIATED.
We have all seen people who were never appreciated. Those who were
near to them by blood and kindred always thought them strange and
visionary. What a sad thing if Christ's bride does not appreciate
His aims for the world, His sorrow over perishing souls, His
heart-ache over dying men! "The fellowship of His sufferings"--
what can it mean? It means that we mourn over the sin in the world
which makes Christ weep; sob over the evil that makes Him hang His
fair head and groan. It means that ever and always we shall look
at things from the Christ standpoint.
THE SHEEP AND THE SHEPHERD.
"My sheep know [recognize] my voice," says the Shepherd. He states
the principle that "sheep" always hear when He speaks. "Lambs" may
be at times mistaken as to the voices that cry in the soul, but
Christians whose experience entitles them to the designation,
"sheep," do not err as to the speaker. Watch a good shepherd
collect his flock at evening. Every sheep knows him. It is getting
dark, and the quiet animals are busily feeding in the fragrant
clover, but the tender cadences of the voice of their guide and
protector pierce their delicate ears and enter their gentle
hearts, and the white flock comes bounding toward the shepherd. A
sportsman in golf suit and plaid cap and with a fine baritone
voice may call earnestly, but "a stranger will they not follow."
The shepherd holds the key to their confidence, and no one else
can unlock the door to their love.
CHRIST HAS THE KEY.
Christ has the key to our hearts. He stands in the dusk of evening
in the falling dew and sends His sweet voice out across the
billowing fields of clover, and all His sheep leap toward "the
Good Shepherd."
THE COW AND THE SUNSET.
Sanctification brings out the power of appreciation in the soul.
What God does for you fills your soul with gratitude, and you can
get blessed any time of day or night by simply reflecting on the
mercies and lovingkindnesses of the Lord. The natural human heart
does not appreciate God, and sees nothing especially lovely in
Him. A cow and the man who owns the cow may stand side by side and
look at the same sunset. The cow sees a big splotch of crimson and
gold; the other sees one of God's sky-paintings, and is inspired
to holy living and self-denial and fidelity to the Master. You
must have a "sunset nature" to appreciate a sunset, and you must
be sanctified wholly to see in Christ a beauty and loveliness
which no Murillo and no Raphael and no Del Sarto have yet put on
canvas.
THE LOVELY CHRIST.
O the lovely Christ! How the heart aches to go to Him! We get so
homesick for Jesus. People are so dull and uninteresting and vapid
and stupid--so precisely like ourselves--we get weary of the world
and its emptiness, and yearn to fly away to be with the spotless
Christ and live in that
"Undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns"
Some day, thank God! the Bridegroom will step out upon the balcony
of heaven and look at us and speak to us in a tone inaudible to
all but ourselves, and our souls will bound with rapture and the
earthen vessel will crumble and we will spread snowy pinions and
wing our flight up to the presence of our soul's King!
CHAPTER VIII.
SOUL-REST.
AN EFFECT.
One of the beatific effects of the cleansing of the heart from all
sin is soul-rest. It always accompanies the glorious experience of
entire purity.
FACIAL INSCRIPTIONS.
This poor tired world of ours needs rest. Study the faces of the
people you meet in the streets, in the markets, in the cars, in
the churches, and there is one word NOT written on them, and that
word is "Rest." You will find many other words written on them. On
some faces you see "Selfishness" in crabbed, crooked letters; on
others "Lust" in bold-faced type; on others "Gluttony"; on others,
"Self-Conceit"; on others, "Craftiness"; and on through a thousand
unworthy legends; but the one thing which makes life worth living
is not found except among the sanctified.
VAMPIRES AND BATS.
It is wonderful how elusive rest is. You may search for it all
your days and grow gray and haggard, and sit down in the evening
of life with the vampires circling about you and be forced to
confess, "I have not found rest!" You may retire from business and
say, "I will spend my declining years in peace," but as the sun
goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the
sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student
you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country,
but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your
pathway and you will carry home with you a Mephisto who will never
leave you.
THE SEEDS OF ANARCHY.
Some Christian people seek rest in changing preachers, but there
is nothing in that to bring it. You may leave the minister who
thumps the desk and listen to a man with a nasal twang, but you
are still restive and unsatisfied. You think the reason your peace
of soul is disturbed is that Mrs. Garrulous talked about you, or
that the weather is rainy and disagreeable, or that the meetings
are dull, or that people are selfish. The real reason is that you
have a restlessness in your heart characteristic of inbred sin.
You possess the seeds of dissatisfaction, and lawlessness, and
anarchy, and nothing but holiness of heart will expel them.
THE OCEAN DEPTHS.
Down in the unfathomed depths of old Ocean there is no movement,
no disturbance. Gigantic "Majesties" and "Kaiser Wilhelms" and
"Oregons" and "Vizcayas" plow and whiten the surface; tempests
rage and Euroclydons roar and currents change and tides ebb and
flow, but the great depth knows no ripple. It is said that down
there the most fragile of frail and delicate organisms grow in
safety. In the depths of the sanctified heart there is no storm
and no breaker. Trials may come and leave white scars; billows may
beat and surges may roll, and water-spouts and tornadoes may make
the upper sea boil with anguish and sorrow and grief, but deep in
the heart there is calm. There the delicate graces of the Spirit
thrive and luxuriate. Great, soulless, iron-keeled, worldly
institutions and sharp-prowed cutters may ride over your
sensibilities, but the inner placidity is unbroken.
THE ETERNAL SABBATH.
God's plan is to rest us so we can work for Him with ease and
success. He institutes an everlasting Sabbath in the spirit that
we may be ceaseless in sanctified activities. If a man is always
jaded and tired he can not take hold of his work with much
enthusiasm.
SPIRITUAL POISE.
There is no mistaking the man or woman who has found the second
rest. There is a poise of spirit and a sweet serious balance of
soul which can not be counterfeited. The preacher who appreciates
spirituality sees no sight more beautiful than the serene, calm
faces of auditors from whose souls the tempests have been cast.
Life's toils and distractions and disappointments have all been
negatived by the power of the all-conquering Christ.
A SCENE AT ALLENTOWN.
These words are being written in the city of Allentown, Pa., where
the writer is spending ten days in a series of Pentecostal
services. Last evening we saw a symbol of the rest Christ gives.
We strolled along the east bank of the Lehigh River about half an
hour after sunset. All the western sky was beautiful with an
afterglow. The water of the river, silver near the shore and
golden toward the west, was as still as the face of a mirror. The
trees on the shore leaned over perfect pictures of themselves. The
hills, which fell back gracefully from the valley, were covered
with cloaks of gold and vermillion and emerald, and not a leaf
stirred in the evening air. Far up the river the tiny bell of a
canal-mule tinkled drowsily. On the veranda of a little cottage a
young mother crooned a lullably to a slumbering child, and a
little bird in a thick grove called, "Peace! Peace!"
CALM.
If God can make so beautiful a scene in the physical world, what
can He not make in the spiritual? Thank God! He can excel anything
the natural eye ever beheld. He can hang the soul with paintings
and turn the "River of Life clear as crystal" through it, and fill
the chambers of the heart with lullabies and the song of birds
crying, "Peace!" If there are times when we are awed and charmed
by
"All the beauty of the world"
let us remember that what we see is only a type of the grandeur
and glory and splendor He will put in our spirit-nature if we but
permit Him to sanctify us and cast out the storms and tempests.
THE PAIN OF SYMPATHY.
While we may possess and enjoy "the second rest" here and now, we
need not forget that another is promised to us. We get weary
physically sometimes here. The days frequently seem long and
trying. There are hours and hours of labor, and nights and nights
of toil, but, thank God! we can say at each sunset, "I am one day
nearer rest." For while a sanctified man is always at rest
spiritually, he can not rest physically to much satisfaction. In
his dreams he can see the white, drawn faces of the doomed, and
hear the wild uncouth shriek of the tormented. He remembers with
horror that one hundred thousand souls are rolled off into
Eternity while the earth makes one revolution! He thinks of
cheerless homes, and torn and bleeding hearts, and wives waiting
for the sound of unsteady steps, and children friendless and
hungry, and figures leaping from bridges, and shaking hands
holding poison, and maniacs behind the bars glaring with wild eye-
balls through dishevelled hair! And he leaps from the couch with
the cry, "O the pity of it all!" And he can not be still, he can
not be idle, but is constrained to do his utmost by word and pen
to save a sinking, gurgling, drowning humanity.
WHEN IT IS ALL OVER.
But one day it will all be over. Soon we shall all have preached
our last sermon and prayed our last prayer and spoken our last
word. Our lives will soon have passed into history. That blessed
hour will soon be here in which we shall "lay down the silver
trumpet of ministry and take up the golden harp of praise."
Hallelujah, it is coming! it is coming! Praise the Lord!
CHAPTER IX.
PRAYERFULNESS.
DELIGHT IN PRAYER.
The precious grace of entire sanctification brings to the heart a
prayerful spirit. Prayer becomes the normal occupation of the
soul. One is surprised to discover that while it was formerly
difficult, if not irksome, to pray at times, now one prays because
it is delightful and easy.
DE RENTY.
Many of us have been surprised to read in the biographies of pious
men and women that they frequently spent hours in prayer. But the
sanctified man understands all that now. He can readily believe
that De Renty heard not the voice of his servant, so intent was he
gazing into the Father's face. He does not doubt that Whitefield
in his college room was "prostrate upon the floor many days,
praying for the baptism with the Holy Ghost."
J.W. REDFIELD.
The writer remembers of reading when just a child the thrilling
life of John Wesley Redfield. There was nothing which struck the
boy-reader with greater force than the prayerfulness of the man.
It awed him, and made him long to enjoy such an experience as
would make prayer so delightful. In the golden experience of
sanctification he found that prayer was delightsome and blessed.
Such is the uniform testimony of all who have been cleansed from
depravity and anointed with the Holy Ghost.
PRAYER HAS ITS ANSWER.
God means true prayer to have audience. We can not understand how
God can vouchsafe to us such tremendous effects as He asserts
shall follow prayer. We can not defend prayer philosophically; but
either "he that asketh receiveth," or the Bible is misleading and
untrustworthy.
TRUE PRAYER.
But what is "true prayer"? In the first place, it is prayer which
says, "Thy will be done." If we pray selfishly, "asking amiss," we
can hope for no answer. We will get no hearing. We must ask with
the thought, "What is the Father's will? What does He consider
best?"
DESPERATION.
True prayer must be earnest. It was the IMPORTUNATE widow that was
heard, and it is the importunate seeker that never fails of an
answer. If when sinners, backsliders, or believers come to the
altar they would pray with earnestness and desperation, there
would be a far larger PER CENT. of them who would go away fully
satisfied. God never gives great blessings to indifferent people.
When He sees a man in an agony of desire and longing, then He
hastens to gladden his heart with an answer.
FAITH.
Prayer must be full of faith. James makes this clear to us. "Let
him ask in faith nothing wavering." God cannot bestow a blessing
upon us if we doubt Him. If a neighbor doubts your character, how
much of your heart do you let him see? If a fellow-preacher
imputes selfish motives to your acts, how often do you go to him
and pour your heart out to him? But those who believe in us--how
frequently we run to them, unlock our hearts and tell them all! It
is thus with God. If we believe His word, if we are sure of the
veracity of His promise, and are confidently expecting an answer,
He will not, can not disappoint us.
THE FORGIVING SPIRIT.
There must be in us a forgiving spirit if our prayers are to be
heard. Forgiveness of our enemies precedes blessing for ourselves.
"If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will
also forgive your trespasses." If I am bitter in my heart toward
any creature, God can not but be deaf to all my cries. If I
nourish hatred, or meditate revenge, or plot the downfall of any
man, my prayers are vain; yea, all my hope in Christ is futile!
GOSSIPING PREACHERS.
O that God may send us all the prayerful blessing! It is better
that we pray than that we discuss politics or talk "shop," or
gossip or jest. If we preachers and evangelists at camps and
conventions would pray more instead of getting in groups and
talking about a world of nothings, our sermons would mean full as
much to those whom we address.
UNBROKEN CONNECTION.
Sanctification makes it possible for us to "pray without ceasing."
The indwelling Paraclete keeps the heart in a constant spirit of
prayer, so that at all hours and in all places prayers ascend.
Communication is kept up between the heart and the throne of Grod.
No snows break the wires. No floods wash away the poles. From the
pulpit, from the sidewalk, from the counter, from the railway
coach, from the sick bed, an ever-steady stream of prayer is kept
up. They may befoul our names, but they can not stop our praying.
They may "cast us out as evil," and may deny us pulpit privileges,
and take away our salaries, but prayer and praise they can not
stifle nor hinder.
INCENSE AND THUNDER.
The prayers of God's people are sweet to Him. "With much incense"
burning in a golden censer (Rev. viii. 3) they float to His
throne. But notice the effect of the prayers of saints. Not only
is there a silence of an half-hour but "voices and thunderings and
lightnings and an earthquake" are observed in the earth. The
children of God, if they but pray and believe, can pull spiritual
fire and earthquakes down upon earth and effect great things for
God and His Church.
CHAPTER X.
SUCCESS.
SUCCESS INTENDED.
Nothing is clearer in the Acts of the Apostles than that the
disciples after Pentecost had success in gospel service.
Everywhere they went God rained fire upon their Word and
sanctioned the truth which they preached by tremendous moral and
spiritual upheavals.
B. T. ROBERTS.
Bishop Roberts has put the matter of success very succinctly: "If
the lawyer must win his case and the doctor cure his patient in
order to be successful, the minister and worker must save souls if
they in their calling are to be said to be successful." But alas,
saving souls is precisely what we are not doing. Thank God! there
is here and there a man who stands out as a soul-saver. But the
average minister is not distinguished for revivalism so much as
proficiency in making a church social a "blooming success."
FALLEN SAMSONS.
We all want to seem to succeed. We shun and dread the appearance
of failure. When a church begins to rot instead of grow it is
natural for us to do our utmost to find out some way of excusing
the retrogression without admitting our failure to reach men with
the gospel. There are evangelists, who in the palmy days of their
power had wonderful, heaven-gladdening revivals, who have ceased
to wield "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and, in order to
cover their spiritual nakedness, are forced to resort to finger-
raising, card-signing methods for stuffing and expanding "the big
revival." There is no more sobbing, no more desperate praying, no
more shouting; all is "decent and in order," as well it may be,
for all is dead.
QUESTION OF EVANGELISM.
Honor to soul-saving! Show us the man who wins men to our Master,
that we may clasp his hand and look into his face. Right here
hangs all the discussion about evangelism. If the evangelist gets
men soundly and scripturally converted and sanctified, let us bid
him Godspeed! If he only amuses them and deals in paltry three-
cent sensationalism, away with more of the same sort of stuff
which we already have in so many pastors!
THE DIVINE RECIPE.
One thing is certain: God intends success and only success for His
people. If, as His children, we fail, it must be because we have
not followed the divine recipe for power and accomplishment. It
was because the one hundred and twenty obeyed Christ and tarried
at Jerusalem that God used the early Church to whip the Roman
Empire.
"HOW TO SUCCEED"
"How to Succeed," used as the title for a book, will make any book
sell, though it be as dry as a patent-office report. People want
to know how to succeed in the world. How strange then that
ministers and churches who are brilliant and conspicuous failures
should shun the preaching of Pentecost--the one cure for failure
and the sole guarantee of success.
EMPTY COMFORT.
How many times some of us have sighed over our inefficiency! How
frequently, in default of apparent results, we have been forced to
console ourselves with the thought that we are "sowing seed" and
that there will be an abundant harvest at no distant date! Thank
God! there is success for us all. Pentecost will give it to us.
JOHN THE BAPTIST.
We do not mean by success financial opulence. A man may be a
success and yet as poor as John the Baptist lunching on dried
locusts and honey-comb. One may be as wealthy as Croesus and yet
be an awful failure. A church may be rich and increased with goods
and incur the Laodicean curse.
PADDED STATISTICS.
Neither does success mean a great and highly-trumpeted statistical
report to lug to conference. Some of our most inspiring
"successes" are all right on paper, but in reality they are
stuffed and padded scandalously. No, success in Christian work is
to "turn many to righteousness," save souls, and secure the
sanctification of believers. If we do not see such results
following our labor, we have either missed God's plan as to our
selection of a field or we are not living in the present enjoyment
of the Pentecostal Baptism.
THE EPOCHAL EXPERIENCE.
The preachers and evangelists who have won great successes in the
calling of sinners to repentance have almost without exception
testified to having received an "enduement" or "anointing"
subsequent to their conversion. The Caugheys, the Moodys, the
Whitefields, the Wesleys, the Foxes, the Earles, though in some
instances they have not believed in holiness according to the
Wesleyan view, have all had an epochal event after which their
work and works were effective and startling.
THE EFFECT OF PENTECOST.
Pentecost coming to a mission-worker will fill his heart with
enthusiasm and energy, and give him a host of jewels washed from
the mire and shining like meteors. The same experience coming to a
mechanic will fire him with a love for Jesus and a solicitude for
souls that will make him pray and fast and weep and work for his
fellow-laborers, for his neighbors, and for his friends. The
Spirit coming to a gifted singer will cause her to consecrate her
voice, like Rachel Winslow in Sheldon's "In His Steps," so that
with holy melody she will reach hearts hitherto hard and
untouched.
THE PASSION FOR SOULS.
One of the conditions of success in soul-saving is a passion for
the salvation of immortal men and women. Full salvation always
brings this, and as long as a worker lives in its plentitude and
enjoyment he is consumed with a burning, longing, panting thirst
for souls.
THE GIGANTIC LANDSLIDE.
The ministers of early Methodism and early Quakerism were not of
the sort who congregate in groups and discuss the relative
desirability of various appointments. They did not spend their
leisure in jesting, punning and guffawing, but in praying,
studying, and working, for even their vacations were turned into
days of toil. They spent their all in one endeavor--to save men
from a yawning Pit and a lurid Hell. Nowadays we live in perpetual
relaxation and recreation. Smooth, insipid preachers talk to
shallow, giddy audiences, and the whole thing is on a gigantic
landslide. Lord, save! or death and damnation are sure.
THE UNCERTAIN FAITH.
There can be no successful denial of the assertion that real soul-
absorbing earnestness in religion is dying out. We sometimes mock
at the Herculean labors of men like Owen, and Baxter, and Calvin,
and Edwards. But though these men were perhaps more or less
legalistic and at times a little narrow, yet one thing is sure,
they made religion the business of life, and went at it with zest,
enthusiasm, and determination. Your modern "Christian" has
"certain intellectual difficulties"; is "not fixed in belief
concerning Socinianism"; does "not like the old idea of the
Atonement"; in fact, is in a state of fusion so far as his belief
and faith are concerned. Men do not give their life's blood for
matters in which they have only a half-faith. But when one is
convinced that men are dying in the dark and that their salvation
depends in a measure on one's activity and fidelity, then one is
hot with zeal and fire from hat to heel and set to working for God
and eternal souls.