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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals: 21. "Behold a Friend!"
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 21. "Behold a Friend!"
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"Behold a Friend!"
You are asking, "How can I be sure of finding my other answering self?" with more emphasis on that word "sure" than voice or underscoring of pen can tell. This is the simple way: let your first Friend, whose love for you sent Him up the Calvary steep, let Him have the utmost devotion of your heart without any reserve. Your heart belongs to Him. He longs for it. It won't be a heart really until it answers to His longing; for it acts its part as a heart only as it beats in full rhythm with His own.
Get into that rhythm. Make it full and strong. Let nothing break it, nor disturb a single one of its throbbing beats. That's the first thing; as simple as it can be. But it is absolutely first. There can be no second until there is a first. Please remember, we are not talking about being saved, nor about becoming a Christian; but just about how to find your other answering self. This is the one sure way. There is no second.
The next step in this way is this: ask your first Friend to bring your other self to you, and to bring you to your other self. Ask Him to make you ready for the other one. Ask Him to bring that other one into the same bond of friendship with himself that you are in. Ask Him to make the other ready for you. Ask simply, with the confident expectancy that knows the result. Keep asking, for it may take some time to work out the answer to these requests of yours.
It likely, will. Maybe it'll take a good bit of time. It's quite apt to. You need changing quite likely, re-shaping and refining. And that takes time. The other one does too, likely. The more you yield to your first Friend's touch daily, the surer and quicker will come the full answer to your prayer. Never think of being discouraged because you don't know as much as your eagerness covets.
Better, infinitely better, beyond all odds of comparison, to live alone with your ideal kept pure and strong in your heart, than ever to lose it, or to lower it by so much as the tenth part of a barleycorn's height. But then don't bother about that: you won't need to live alone.
"Be patient, as well as always true;
And Nature, some sweet day,
Will give to thee the lay
That thy yearning heart thrills to."
In the sweet fulness of time your first Friend will bring your human friend and you together; and then the new heavens and the new earth will have come for you. Then you will sing;
"God never loved me in so sweet a way before;
'Tis He alone who can such blessing send.
For when His love would new expression find,
He brought thee to me and said, 'Behold a friend!'"
And if you have reached over the line in your life where that question is being asked, because for you the sacred union has been made, maybe here is the simple pathway for you into yet more and better. Many a true union of hearts has been brought about by the first Friend, though His part was not recognized, or only thought of very vaguely. To recognize the part He has had in your happiness, and to let Him fully in now as first Friend to each and both, will bring yet greater sweets and finer.
And—softly, very softly—if, maybe, sometimes in your heart you half wonder if you slipped a bit, just a little bit back there in your choosing and deciding, and then quickly chide yourself for the unbidden thought and push it resolutely away, yet only to find it insistently using some door-crack to come in again—if so, or more than that maybe, remember, this same path will surely lead to two new hearts coming into a new union of hearts and lives. Yes, it is even so.