“Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also received us, to the glory of God” (Rom. xv. 7).
This is a sublime principle, and it will give sublimity to life. It is stated elsewhere in similar language, “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
This is our high calling, to represent Christ, and act in His behalf, and in His character and spirit, under all circumstances and toward all men. “What would Jesus do?” is a simple question which will settle every difficulty, and always settle it on the side of love.
But we cannot answer this question rightly without having Jesus Himself in our hearts. We cannot act Christ. This is too grave a matter for acting. We must have Christ, and simply be natural and true to the life within us, and that life will act itself out.
Oh, how easy it is to love every one, and see nothing but loveliness when our heart is filled with Christ, and how every difficulty melts away and every one we meet seems clothed with the Spirit within us when we are filled with the Holy Ghost!
September 11.
“Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age” (Matt. xxviii. 20).
It is “all the days,” not “always.” He comes to you each day with a new blessing. Every morning, day by day, He walks with us, with a love that never tires and a blessing that never grows old. And He is with us “all the days”; it is a ceaseless abiding. There is no day so dark, so commonplace, so uninteresting, but you find Him there. Often, no doubt, He is unrecognized, as He was on the way to Emmaus, until you realize how your heart has been warmed, your love stirred, your Bible so strangely vivified, and every promise seems to speak to you with heavenly reality and power. It is the Lord! God grant that His living presence may be made more real to us all henceforth, and whether we have the consciousness and evidence, as they had a few glorious times in those forty days, or whether we go forth into the coming days, as they did most of their days, to walk by simple faith and in simple duty, let us know at least that the fact is true forevermore, THAT HE IS WITH US, a Presence all unseen, but real, and ready if we needed Him any moment to manifest Himself for our relief.