May 6

Morning

We dwell in him. — 1 John 4:13

Do you need a house for your soul? Do you ask, “What is the purchase price?” It is something less than proud human nature will like to give. It is without money and without price. Ah! you would like to pay a respectable rent! You would love to do something to win Christ? Then you cannot have the house, for it is “without price.” Will you take my Master’s house on a lease for all eternity—with nothing to pay for it, nothing but the ground-rent of loving and serving Him forever? Will you take Jesus and “dwell in Him?”

See, this house is furnished with all you desire—it is filled with riches more than you will spend as long as you live. Here you can have intimate communion with Christ and feast on His love. Here are tables well-stored with food for you to live on forever! In it, when weary, you can find rest with Jesus; and from it you can look out and see heaven itself.

Will you have the house? Ah! if you are houseless, you will say, “I would like to have the house; but may I have it?” Yes! there is the key—the key is, “Come to Jesus.” “But,” you say, “I am too shabby for such a house.” Never mind; there are garments inside. If you feel guilty and condemned, come; and though the house is too good for you, Christ will make you good enough for the house by-and-by. He will wash you and cleanse you, and you will yet be able to sing, “We dwell in Him.”

Believer! thrice happy are you to have such a dwelling-place! Greatly privileged you are, for you have a “strong habitation” in which you are ever safe. And “dwelling in Him,” you have not only a perfect and secure house but an everlasting one. When this world shall have melted like a dream—our house shall live, and stand more imperishable than marble, more solid than granite, self-existent as God, for it is God Himself! “We dwell in Him.”

Evening

All the days of my appointed time will I wait. — Job 14:14

A little stay on earth—will make heaven more heavenly. Nothing makes rest so sweet as toil; nothing renders security so pleasant as exposure to alarms. The bitter cups of earthly sorrow—will give a relish to the new wine which sparkles in the golden bowls of glory. Our battered armor and scarred countenances, will render more illustrious our victory above, when we are welcomed to the seats of those who have overcome the world.

We would not have full fellowship with Christ if we did not for awhile sojourn below, for He was baptized with a baptism of suffering among men, and we must be baptized with the same if we would share his kingdom. Fellowship with Christ is so honorable that the sorest sorrow is a light price by which to procure it.

Another reason for our lingering here is for the good of others. We would not wish to enter heaven until our work is done and it may be that we are yet ordained to minister light to benighted souls in the wilderness of sin. Our prolonged stay here is doubtless for God’s glory. A tried saint, like a well-cut diamond, glitters much in the King’s crown. Nothing reflects so much honor on a workman—as a protracted and severe trial of his work, and its triumphant endurance of the ordeal without giving way in any part. We are God’s workmanship, in whom He will be glorified by our afflictions. It is for the honor of Jesus that we endure the trial of our faith with sacred joy. Let each man surrender his own longings to the glory of Jesus, and feel, “If my lying in the dust would elevate my Lord by so much as an inch—let me still lie among the pots of earth. If to live on earth forever, would make my Lord more glorious, it would be my heaven to be shut out of heaven.”

Our time on earth is fixed and settled by eternal decree. Let us not be anxious about it but wait with patience until the gates of pearl shall open!