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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 08. Opening the Life-door.
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Opening the Life-door.
There is a second fact to be put in with hard, sharp emphasis. Life through Jesus comes only as fully as the opened door permits. You will note that I am not speaking of heaven, the afterlife, but of this tremendous life we are living now. There is a truth here for the after-life, too, no doubt. The after-life will be shaped upon the life lived here. A man's life here becomes the mold or standard for that great afterlife. Of course this does not affect a man's salvation; the fact of it. But then, who is there who is willing to be saved by the skin of his teeth, pulled in at the end of a rope, without a covering rag to his life, barely in, breathlessly sprawling where he has gotten in!
This new life through Jesus begins now as quickly as the spirit's door is opened to Him. It begins coursing through all a man's being. It affects all of his powers. It touches into new vitality and new beauty every gift with which man is endowed. But it can come only as it is allowed to come. The man's will always remains supreme in his life. Even when God's will is made supreme in a life, as it should be, it is by the imperial act of the man's own will. A man's will is never greater in action than when all its great fine-grained strength is used in yielding to God's will. A man can keep the door partially shut.
Will it seem severe if I say that most men do? Yet the truth seems to force just that statement out into plainest speech. And a partially opened door means only partial life incoming, and partial death remaining. I remember an old, dear friend of mine, a splendid man in his strong, gentle spirit, a great leader among men, the great leader in the movement with which his life was and is identified. Yet he died when a man should be in the mature fullness of his powers. For certain habits of life common among men, not commonly regarded as wrong, and not wrong except as being against the law of life in the body —yet that is a great and grievous exception— sapped his vitality, and poisoned the body, and led to the death that should have been delayed for years.
And as I speak of him I recall another great leader, in another sphere of activity in the religious world, who slipped the tether of life when in the prime of his years, for like reasons. These men sinned against the law of their bodies. And that is sinning against the God of our bodies. God needs us and our strength. Whatever takes us away before His time, or takes away our strength, hampers God in His activities among men just that far. They sinned unwittingly no doubt, thoughtlessly, and yet there is apt to be a certain willfulness in such thoughtlessness. Many men sin ignorantly. Yet such ignorance is a sin, for we can know and should know how best to live for the glory of God.
Jesus' gift of life is both for the after-life, the eternal life, and for the present time. The present life affects far more seriously than we know the fullness of life in that after-life. Only as the door is swung fully open can Jesus give fullness of life here and after. Full surrender to the sway of Jesus, becoming in practice more really full as new light comes, is the open door to full life from Jesus' hand. Partial surrender means partial life.
There is an exception to be noted here. Fullness of life does not mean absence of bodily death yet. For Jesus' plan of life has not yet been fully carried out. He is to reign until all enemies are put under His feet; then the last enemy, death, is to be put down, too, but not until then. Jesus' redemption will be completed on His return. Meanwhile, with this exception noted, there is fullness of life through fullness of His sway within.