Christ is the key to the puzzle of this world. May God give us to be anything or nothing, so that the Lord Jesus may be everything. The magnet always turns towards the pole; the needle always trembles a little when the storm and tempest roar, but its direction doesn’t change. The needle of the Christian heart always points towards Christ.
The only thing which can be true blessing to our brethren—so precious because they belong to Him—is that which we reproduce of Him. It is in Christ that all our thoughts are adjusted, set right, judged and purified.
The infiniteness of God Himself staggers the littleness of the heart of man when Christ does not give him a sure support. [Thus] it is in Him that we appreciate what He is. If He is the life, all which that life does has Him for its end and object.
Everything relates to Him: We do not eat [or drink] without Him (how can we when He is our very life?); what we say, what we do, is said and done in the name of the Lord Jesus. The most eminent Christian is one of whom no one has ever heard speak, some poor laborer or servant, whose all is Christ, and who does all for His eye, and His alone.
Jesus is the fountain of all blessedness, sent to poor, weak, wretched sinners, that they may have abundance of comfort, of peace and of enjoyment. We must find everything (but Christ) nothing. No trial can touch a person who has Christ for his all. He may have lost this or lost that, but if he has Christ he has that which he cannot lose.
It is not the quantity we do that makes spirituality, but the measure of presenting Christ that is the value of our service in a world where there is nothing of God. It is not always in the correction of the failures which come before us that sources of unhappiness are healed; they disappear when souls are nourished upon the riches which are in Christ.
We must think of this. We must, while ourselves feeding upon Christ—and He gives us to feed on Him without stint—cause others to breathe a new atmosphere, where Christ is. He has purchased a peculiar people, to be zealous of good works (Titus 2:1414Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:14)). He has brought you to Himself, to have your whole heart wrapped up in His interests, your thoughts, actions, everything for Him.
Are we living enough out of the world (not merely out of its pleasures, but its cares) and enough with Christ for Him to have a large place in the daily thoughts of our hearts? Have we the consciousness, from the time we get up in the morning till we go to bed at night, that our hearts are with Christ—a consciousness that He is in us, and we identified with Him?
J. N. Darby