THE BLESSING IS OBTAINABLE NOW Part 2

The wisdom of the fathers

THE BLESSING IS OBTAINABLE NOW Part 2

The blessing we speak of changes Christ from a visitor to an abider in the heart. His visits were beautiful and blessed, but alas for the absences ! How we used to sing : and ''Return, 0 Holy Dove, return,'' ''How tedious and tasteless the hours when Jesus no longer I see."

The indwelling is what we want; Christ to move in, take possession and never leave us any more. This is brought about by a method analagous to what we see when a person moves into an earthly home. First, the house is to be emptied. If a man purchases a building from you, there is one thing he expects, and that you do, you empty it for him. He does not want your old goods and chattels. He has furniture of his own, and doubtless much better than the kind you possess.

So in offering yourself as the Lord's dwelling place, He demands that you let everything go, keep nothing back, and, in a word, empty yourself. This is only another way of describing consecration. A man who is laying everything on the altar is simply emptying himself. As the consecration proceeds, the person is conscious of an increasing emptiness, and just before the blessing comes, in describing his experience he would say: I have given up everything, am all emptied, and have nothing as yet in return except the conviction that I have done right...

This is unquestionably the hard thing with many to do. Yet it must be done. It may take days, but there will be no divine incoming until there is the human emptying. How is it possible to fill us until we are first emptied? How could God truthfully say we had His fullness when something of self and the world was left? Emptied first, filled afterward is the order. The disciples were ten days engaged in the human part of the work. We once thought they were ten days getting filled with the Holy Ghost, but they were ten days getting emptied.

(from "Sanctified Life" by Rev. Carradine)