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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 30. The Bethlehem Birth
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The Bethlehem Birth
There were four of these experiences in our Lord's life. At the very beginning came the Bethlehem Birth. That meant for Him a birth out of the usual course of nature, yet working within nature's usual processes. It was something more-than-the-natural coming down into the natural. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon the pure gentle maiden of Nazareth and a new human life was begotten by Him within her, and in due course came to the maturity of birth. This was a distinctive thing with Jesus.
Now, in quite a different sense, but in a very real sense, there will be for us, too, a Bethlehem Birth. The Holy Spirit will come in and begin a new life within us. This is the only beginning of the "Follow Me" life for any of us. There's a something on the Spirit's part before there can be a beginning on my part. Yet that hardly tells the whole story. My part is really first; I open the door for Him to come in. When I accept Jesus as my Saviour, that's opening the door. The Spirit comes in and begins the new life within me. And yet there's another first before that first act of mine. He woos me with His patient, tender love. That is the first first. Then I open the door: at once He comes in, and does the thing which only He can do. So begins the "Follow Me" life. This is the real, the only beginning.
And yet there's more here of the practical sort than we have thought of, most of us. It means that there is within us a life higher than the natural life, and this higher life is to be higher, it is to be the controlling life. It is to hold the upper hand over the natural life. The control is to be from above. That is to say, the motives and desires of the upper life are to be dominant in my daily round. It is the Father-pleasing life as contrasted with the natural life, of which we talked a while ago. Wherever the two come in conflict, the upper is to rule.
Now, I know this rather runs across the grain of a good deal of our so-called Christian life. There are a good many people who, let us really believe, have been "born again," to use the familiar phrase, yet they seem to have stayed in the being-born stage, the infancy stage. That which was "born again" in them seems not to have been developed. It has never been allowed to grow. The under life has been given the upper hand, and the upper life kept strictly down. The salt isn't salty. The common round of life is seasoned wholly by the old seasoning.
Our Lord's "Follow Me" becomes a radical, decisive thing at the very start. It means that we will allow this new life of the Spirit to grow into lusty vigour, and to become the controlling life So it will be the chief thing. All the life shall be directed and controlled from above. This is a result that will come of itself if we really follow. Obedience, and back of that the quiet time on the knees with the Book, will give food and air and growing space to this new life, and its growth will crowd down the other.