What a challenge to examine our hearts. On what or who am I depending for my stability, my sanctification, and my happiness?
"Is your knowledge of God a transforming knowledge?
Have you so become acquainted with God as to receive the impress (as it
were) of what God is?—for a true knowledge of God is a transforming
knowledge. As I look upon the glory of God I am changed into that glory;
and as my acquaintance with God deepens, I become more like God. There
is a transfer of God's moral image to my soul. Is your knowledge then
transforming? Does your acquaintance with God make you more like
God—more holy, more divine, more heavenly, more spiritual? Does it
prompt you to pant after conformity to God's mind, desiring in all
things to walk so as to please God, and to have, as it were, a transfer
of the nature of God to your soul? Examine, therefore, your professed
acquaintance with God, and see whether it is that acquaintance which
will bring you to heaven, and will go on increasing through the
countless ages of eternity.
And I would say to God's saints—trace the cause
of much of our uneven walking, of our little holiness, and,
consequently, of our little happiness, to our imperfect acquaintance
with what God is. Did I know more of what God is to me in Christ—how He
loves me, what a deep interest He takes in all my concerns—did I know
that He never withdraws His eye from me for one moment, that His heart
of love never grows cold—oh! did I but know this, would I not walk more
as one acquainted with God? Would I not desire to consult Him in all
that interests me, to acknowledge Him in all my ways, to look up to Him
in all things, and to deal with Him in all matters? Would I not desire
to be more like Him, more holy, more divine, more Christ-like? Yes,
beloved; it is because we know Him so little, that we walk so much in
uneven ways. We consult man rather than God; we flee to the asylum of a
creature-bosom, rather than to the bosom of the Father; we go to the
sympathy of man, rather than to the sympathy of God in Christ, because
we are so imperfectly acquainted with God.
But did I know more clearly what God is to me in
the Son of His love, I should say—I have not a trial but I may take that
trial to my Father; I am not in a perplexity but I may go to God for
counsel; I am in no difficulty, I have no want, but it is my privilege
to spread it before my Father—to unveil my heart of sin, my heart of
wretchedness, my heart of poverty, to Him who has unveiled His heart of
love, His heart of grace, His heart of tenderness to me in Christ. As I
become more acquainted with God, my character and my Christian walk will
be more even, more circumspect, more holy, and consequently more happy."
[taken from Octavius Winslow's Morning Thought]
