God has often to bring us not only into the place of suffering, and the bed of sickness and pain, but also into the place where our righteousness breaks down and our character falls to pieces, in order to humble us in the dust and show us the need of entire crucifixion to all our natural life. Then, at the feet of Jesus we are ready to receive Him, to abide in Him and depend upon Him alone, and draw all our life and strength each moment from Him, our Living Head.
It was thus that Peter was saved by his very fall, and had to die to Peter that he might live more perfectly to Christ.
Have we thus died, and have we thus renounced the strength of our own self-confidence?
We begin life with the natural, next we come into the spiritual; but then, when we have truly received the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the natural is added to the spiritual, and we are able to receive the gifts of His providence and the blessings of life without becoming centered in them or allowing them to separate us from Him.
September 2.
“Who hath despised the day of small things” (Zech. iv. 10).
The oak comes out of the acorn, the eagle out of that little egg in the nest, the harvest comes out of the seed; and so the glory of the coming age is all coming out of the Christ life now, even as the majesty of His kingdom was all wrapped up that night in the babe of Bethlehem.
Oh, let us take Him for all our life. Let us be united to His person and His risen body. Let us know what it is to say, “The Lord is for the body and the body is for the Lord”! We are members of His body and His flesh and His bones.