Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation | Page 7

All of God's power is at man's
disposal; but man must reach out and take. This long stretched but
waiting time is for man's sake, that he may have fullest opportunity.
The longsuffering of God would woo men.[24]
When at length opportunity comes to its end it will be only because
things have gotten into such desperate shape, into such an awful fix,
that at length for man's sake Christ will step into the direct action of the
earth once again. He will take the leadership of earth into His own
hands, even while still leaving each man free in his individual choice.
This is the first part of the answer. The waiting is that man may have
fullest opportunity.
Then Christ has a great hunger for willing hearts. No words are strong
enough to tell His longing for a free, glad, joyous surrender to His
mastery. He could so easily end the present conflict, but He waits that
men may bring to Him the allegiance of their lives, given of their own
glad, gracious, voluntary accord. He was a volunteer Saviour. He longs
for that love that is the bubbling out of a free, full heart.
The best love is only given freely without any compulsion of any sort,

save only love's sweet compelling. He wants what He gives--the best.
And so He waits, patiently waits just a bit longer. This is the second bit
of the answer. The long delay spells out the hunger as well as the
patience of God's heart. The divine Husbandman is patiently waiting,
and sending warm sun and soft rains and fragrant dews while
waiting.[25]
"The Husbandman waiteth-- The Husbandman? Why? For the heart of
one servant Who hears not His cry.
"The Husbandman waiteth-- He waiteth? What for? For the heart of
one servant To love Him yet more.
"The Husbandman waiteth-- Long patience hath He-- But He waiteth in
hunger-- Oh! Is it for thee?"[26]
Taking with Your Life.
But--ah! listen, there's a wonderful "but" to put in here. But, while
waiting He puts all His limitless power at our disposal. If that simple
sentence could be put into letters of living flame, its tremendous
meaning might burn into our hearts. When Paul piled up phrase on
phrase in his eager attempt to have his Asiatic friends in and around
Ephesus take in the limitless power of the ascended Christ, he added
the significant words, "to the Church."[27] All that power is for the use,
and at the disposal, of the Church.
The Church was meant to be a unit in spirit in loyalty to her absent
Lord, wholly under the dominating touch of the Holy Spirit, not only in
her official actions, but in the lives of the individual members. If she
were so, no human imagination could take in the startling,
revolutionary power, softly, subtly, but with resistless sweep, flowing
down from the crowned Christ, among grateful men.
Not being such a unit it is not possible that that power shall be as great
in manifestation as was planned and meant. For no individual nor group
can ever take the place in action of the whole unified body of believers,
acting as a channel for the power of the crowned Christ. That power

shall be realized on the earth only when the Church is so unified, and at
work, under the reigning Christ, from the new headquarters up in the
heavens.
But meanwhile all of that power is at the disposal of any disciple of
Christ--the humblest--who will simply live in full-faced touch with
Christ, and who will take of that power as the need comes, and as the
sovereign Holy Spirit leads.
It is of this, this personal taking, that Paul is speaking when he piles up
that intense sentence: "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that
we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us."[28] The
great bother in Paul's day and ever since, and now, is to get people to
take. The power is fairly a-tremble in the air at our very finger-tips.
And we go limping, crutching along both bodily and mentally and in
our spiritual leanness.
Those tremendous words of Jesus, "because I go unto the Father," with
the whole passage in which they occur,[29] must be read in the light
shining from the throne. Only so can they be understood. But then, so
read, they begin to grip us, and grip us hard, as we see what He really
meant and means.
He who has the warm, child-like touch of heart with Jesus, that the
word "believeth" stands for, shall--as the Holy Spirit has full
control--do the same works as Jesus did, same in kind and in degree,
and then shall do even greater than Jesus ever did. Because it is