It is of this, this personal taking, that Paul is speaking when he piles up that intense sentence: "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us."[28] The great bother in Paul's day and ever since, and now, is to get people to take. The power is fairly a-tremble in the air at our very finger-tips. And we go limping, crutching along both bodily and mentally and in our spiritual leanness.
[29] John xiv. 12-14.
Those tremendous words of Jesus, "because I go unto the Father," with the whole passage in which they occur,[29] must be read in the light shining from the throne. Only so can they be understood. But then, so read, they begin to grip us, and grip us hard, as we see what He really meant and means.
He who has the warm, child-like touch of heart with Jesus, that the word "believeth" stands for, shall—as the Holy Spirit has full control—do the same works as Jesus did, same in kind and in degree, and then shall do even greater than Jesus ever did. Because it is now the glorified crowned Christ who is doing them through some child of His, simple-hearted enough to let Him have full control.
And the means through which He will do them is simple, child-like, trusting, humble prayer. The man using the power is on his knees. The lower down he gets the more and more freely the power flows down and out among men.
As one learns to keep in touch—learns it slowly, stumblingly, with many a stupid fall, and many a tremble and quiver—as he learns to keep in simple touch with the crowned Christ he will find all the power of that Christ coming with a soft surging throb of life wherever needed. We may have all we can take. But the taking must be with one's very life. No mere earnest repeating of a creed in Church service will avail here. The repeating must be, syllable by syllable, with feet and will, with hands and life, in the daily tread where each step is stubbornly contested.
This is the bit of truth for the waiting time. This is the song to be singing in this present "not-yet" interval. And the song will help cut down the length of that "not-yet," until the friction of our lived faith shall wear off the "not" and wipe out the "yet," and we shall find the crowned Christ a reigning Christ.
For some day this patient waiting crowned Man will rise up from His seat at the Father's right hand. He will step directly into the action of earth once again. Man will have had his fullest opportunity lengthened out to the last notch of his possible use of it. Then we shall see the crowned Christ quietly stepping in, taking matters wholly into His own hands, and acting in all the affairs of earth as the Crowned One. Then He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates out to where the ends of the earth become a common line on the other side. The Kingdom will have come, for the King will be reigning.
[30] Hebrews x. 13.
[31] Acts iii. 21.