The One Great Reality | Page 7

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 come into the kitchen. I said, 'What do you want me for?' She replied, 'I want you to come out here and sing.' I thought this queer, so I went to see what it all meant.
"In the middle of the kitchen was an empty flour barrel that she had just dusted out. 'Now, my dear,' she said, 'I have often heard you say one could put his head into an empty flour barrel and sing, "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow," if he believed what God says. Now here is your chance, practise what you preach.'
"There was the empty flour barrel staring at me with open mouth, and my purse was empty too. I looked for my faith, but could not find it;