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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Power (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 56. A Bunch of Keys
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A Bunch of Keys
To those who would enter these inner sacred recesses here is a small bunch of keys which will unlock the doors. Three keys in this bunch; a key-time, a key-book, and a key-word. The key-time is time alone with God daily. With the door shut. Outside things shut outside, and one's self shut in alone with God. This is the trysting-hour with our Friend. Here He will reveal Himself to us, and reveal our real selves to ourselves. This is going to school to God. It is giving Him a chance to instruct and correct, to strengthen and mellow and sweeten us. One must get alone to find out that he never is alone. The more alone we are so far as men are concerned the least alone we are so far as God is concerned. It must be unhurried time. Time enough to forget about time. When the mind is fresh and open. One must use this key if he is to know the sweets of friendship with God.
The key-book is this marvelous old classic, God's Word. Take this book with you when you go to keep tryst with your Friend. God speaks in His Word. He will take these words and speak them with His own voice into the ear of your heart. You will be surprised to find how light on every sort of question will come. It is remarkable what a faithful half-hour daily with a good paragraph (One beauty of the revised version is its paragraphing Bible in wide, swift, continuous reading will do in giving one a swing and a grasp of this old Book. In time, and not long time either, one will come to be saturated with its thought and spirit. Reading the Bible is listening to God. It is fairly pathetic what a hard time God has to get men's ears. He is ever speaking but we will not be quiet enough to hear. One always enjoys listening to his friend. What this Friend says to us will change radically our conceptions of Himself, and of life. It will clear the vision, and discipline the judgment, and stiffen the will.
The key-word is obedience: a glad prompt doing of what our Friend desires because He desires it. Obedience is saying "yes" to God. It is the harmony of the life with the will of God. With some it seems to mean a servile bondage to details. It should rather mean a spirit of intelligent loyalty to God. It aims to learn His will, and then to do it. God's will is revealed in His word. His particular will for my life He will reveal to me if I will listen, and, if I will obey, so far as I know to obey. If I obey what I know, I will know more. Obedience is the organ of knowledge in the soul. "He that willeth to do His will shall know."
God's will includes His plan for a world, and for each life in the world. Both concern us. He would first work in us, that He may work through us in His passionate outreach for a world. His will includes every bit of one's life; and therefore obedience must also include every bit. A run out in a single direction may serve as a suggestion of many others.
The law of my body, which obeyed brings or continues health is God's will, as much as that which concerns moral action. Our bodies are holy because God lives in them. Overwork, insufficient sleep, that imprudent diet and eating which seems the rule rather than the exception, carelessness of bodily protection in rain or storm or drafts or otherwise:—these are sins against God's will for the body, and no one who is disobedient here can ever be a channel of power up to the measure of God's longing for us.
And so regarding all of one's life, one must ever keep an open mind Godward so as to get a well balanced sense of what His will is. Practice is the great thing here. This is school work. By persistent listening and practicing there comes a mature judgment which avoids extremes in both directions. But the rule is this: cheery prompt obeying regardless of consequences. Disobedience, failure to obey, is breaking with our Friend.
These are the three keys which will let us into the innermost chambers of friendship with God. And with them goes a key-ring on which these keys must be strung. It is this:—implicit trust in God. Trust is the native air of friendship. In its native air it grows strong and beautiful. Whatever disturbs an active abiding trust in God must be driven out of doors, and kept out. Doubt chills the air below normal. Anxiety overheats the air. A calm looking up into God's face with an unquestioning faith in Him under every sort of circumstance—this is trust. Faith has three elements: knowledge, belief and trust. Knowledge is acquaintance with certain facts. Belief is accepting these facts as true. Trust is risking something that is very precious. Trust is the life-blood of faith. This is the atmosphere of the true natural life as planned by God.
"If a wren can cling
To a spray a-swing
In a mad May wind, and sing, and sing,
As if she'd burst for joy;
Why cannot I, Contented lie,
In His quiet arms, beneath His sky,
Unmoved by earth's annoy?"
Shall we take these keys, and this key-ring and use them faithfully? It will mean intimate friendship with God. And that is the one secret of power, fresh, and ever freshening.
There is a simple story told of an old German friend of God which illustrates all of this with a charming picturesqueness. Professor Johan Albrecht Bengal was a teacher in the seminary in Denkendorf, Germany, in the eighteenth century. "He united profound reverence for the Bible with an acuteness which let nothing escape him." The seminary students used to wonder at the great intellectuality, and great humility and Christliness which blended their beauty in him. One night, one of them, eager to learn the secret of his holy life, slipped up into his apartments while the professor was out lecturing in the city, and hid himself behind the heavy curtains in the deep recess of the old-fashioned window. Quite a while he waited until he grew weary and thought of how weary his teacher must be with his long day's work in the class-room and the city. At length he heard the step in the hall, and waited breathlessly to learn the coveted secret. The man came in, changed his shoes for slippers, and sitting down at the study table, opened the old well-thumbed German Bible and began reading leisurely page by page. A half hour he read, three-quarters of an hour, an hour, and more yet. Then leaning his head down on his hands for a few minutes in silence he said in the simplest most familiar way, "Well, Lord Jesus, we're on the same old terms. Good-night."
If we might live like that. Begin the day with a bit of time alone, a good-morning talk with Him. And as the day goes on in its busy round sometimes to put out your hand to Him, and under your breath say, "let's keep on good terms, Lord Jesus." And then when eventide comes in to go off alone with Him for a quiet look into His face, and a goodnight talk, and to be able to say, with reverent familiarity: "Good-night, Lord Jesus, we are on the same old terms, you and I, good-night." Ah! such a life will be fairly fragrant with the very presence of God.