Quiet Talks on Following the Christ | Page 8

the emergency-stricken crowds, healing their sick,
feeding their hunger, raising their dead, comforting broken hearts,
winning back sin-stained men and women, teaching the ignorant
neglected multitudes, preaching the Father's yearning love, searching
out the straying, ceaselessly travelling up and down, without leisure
enough to sleep or to eat oftentimes, and all this despite the efforts of
His kinsfolk to restrain His burning intensity.
This is what I mean by a Father-pleasing life. It was truly the
consecrated life, consecrated to His Father's emergency plan for His
world. It was the surrendered life, wholly given up to the one
passionate plan of His Father's broken heart for His earth family.
Now, His "Follow Me" does not mean imitation. It does not mean a
restless, aggressive hurrying here and there in meetings and Christian
service. It means that there will be a getting so close that the sweet
fever of His heart shall be caught by ours. The world-vision of His eyes
shall flood ours. The passion of the Father's heart shall become the
passion of our hearts. And we shall be controlled in all our lives, our

holdings, our habits, by what He tells us. It does not mean that we will
seek to be homeless as Jesus was, though it may possibly turn out to
mean for some of us that we shall be homeless even as He.
But it means that we shall find out the Father's plan for our lives. And
when it has become clear, we will set to music pitched in the joyous
major our Lord's own words, "I do always the things that are pleasing
to Him." And then we will set our lives to that joyous music with its
rare undertone of the exquisite minor. It may mean Africa for you, or
China for this other one. It may mean a plainer home at home, a
simpler wardrobe, a more careful use of money. It may mean a new
dominant note in your preaching, and all the personal influence of your
life. It may possibly mean what will seem like yet more radical changes.
It certainly will mean a deepening peace within, a closer touch of
fellowship with the Lord Jesus, a wholly new conception of the
meaning of prayer, and a radically new experience of the power of God
in our own bodies and lives, and in our touch with others. It will mean
that the music of His will and ours swinging rhythmically together in
all things shall sweep our lives even as the strong wind the young
saplings.
This was the second trait in our Lord Jesus' character upward, He lived
the Father-pleasing life. To some it will seem like a further step--a
fourth step--downward in His humility. And it was. The way up is
down. The down slant is the beginning of the hilltop road. Going down
is the way up; downward in the crowd's estimation; upward into closer
touch of sympathetic life with God, and in reaching the true ideal of
life.

The Obedient Life.
The third trait of our Lord Jesus' character upward, in relation with His
Father, was that He lived the obedient life. This is really emphasizing
what has just been said. But it is putting the emphasis on the daily habit
of His life, rather than on the underneath motive. This was the daily
spelling out of the first two traits. Obedience became the touchstone by

which everything was tested.
The touchstone was not men's needs, deeply as that took hold of His
heart, and shaped so much His life. It was not the thought of service,
though never was a life so filled with eager glad service. The
touchstone was not natural liking or choice, the proper instinctive reach
out of His true human nature, though this would be strong in Him, the
typical Son of Man. This would not be repressed as an unholy or wrong
thing. It would only be given second place, or left out, as it might run
across the grain of the great life-passion. With a fresh touch of awe it
may truly be said: He did not come down to earth primarily to die,
though He knew beforehand that this would stand out as the great one
thing. The death was an item in the obedience. He came down to do His
Father's will. The path of obedience led straight to the hill of the cross,
and He trod that path regardless of where it led. Obedience was the one
touchstone of His life.[12] And it will be the one touchstone of His true
follower's life. We shall run across this same vein of bright yellow gold,
again and again, as we work on through this "Follow Me" mine. These
were the three traits of our Lord Jesus' character