The One Great Reality | Page 7

will reveal Him to you, because this is what He promises to do.
Look at the last line of the 27th verse of Matthew xi. where Christ says,
"He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him," and without a pause He
adds the wonderful invitation, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It is to the weary and heavy
laden that He reveals the Father. He invites them to share the
fellowship He has with the Father, the peace and joy and rest of
knowing the Father.
Why does He invite the weary ones to come to Him? because He felt in
Himself such joy in this close fellowship with God, He wanted every
one to have it too. He felt that His experience of what the Father was to
Him was so rich, He longed for them to come and share it, "I will give
you rest." It is as if He said, "I will give you the same rest I have when
I am tired and hungry and thirsty; the same comfort that I have when I
am misunderstood and reviled; the rest, the comfort, the peace I have in
My Father."
We have the same assurance when the Holy Ghost says in St. Paul's
letter to the Corinthians, "Grace be to you and peace from God our
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all

comfort." [Footnote: 2 Cor. i, 2, 3.]
How can you and I know what the Lord Jesus found in His Father's
love? He has graciously made it known to us in the four Gospels. There
the veil is drawn aside and we see how all through His life He was in
close fellowship with the Father.
We can hear the very words which the Son spoke to His Father in the
hour of deep agony: "O My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass
from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." [Footnote: St.
Matt. xxvi. 39.] The last words on His lips when He was dying on the
Cross were, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." [Footnote:
St. Luke xxiii. 46.] He said to His disciples the last night, "You will
leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me."
All through His life He spoke of His oneness with the Father and the
joy of doing and finishing the work which He gave Him to do.
We too can have the sense of God's Presence in our souls at all times. A
Christian woman who was suffering from neuralgia told me that one
night when she could not sleep, a voice seemed to whisper softly to her,
"Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear
Him, for He knoweth our frame, He knows all about our poor bodies,
for He made them," [Footnote: Ps. ciii. 13, 14.] and with those words of
comfort in her mind she fell into a refreshing sleep.
If you will turn to the 6th chapter of St. Matthew again you will see in
the 8th verse that our Heavenly Father knows about something else.
"He knows what things we have need of before we ask Him."
The secret of what it is to have God as our Father, and the sweetness of
it, comes out in these three homely questions, What shall we eat, what
shall we drink, what shall we wear? And Christ says, [Footnote: St.
Matt, vi. 31, 32.] Take no thought, that means, do not be anxious about
these things, for your Heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of
all these things. Yes, if He knows, that is enough, and then we have
only to trust Him for all.
Do you find your faith failing sometimes? It is one thing to trust God
when the wages are coming in regularly, and quite another thing to
trust Him when times are bad. It is just then we learn to look less at our
faith and more at God's Faithfulness.
A minister once gave a little bit of his experience about this. He said,
"It is only as we really take God's promises and plant our feet upon

them that we shall find faith abiding in times of testing. The last penny
may be gone but GOD is there. I know this to be true.
"I have often said when preaching, 'It takes real faith in God to be able
to put your head into an empty flour barrel and sing the doxology.' My
wife had heard me say this, and one morning she called me to