Church of God, Carmichael, CA
Charles E. Orr, Original Publishing Unknown
[Original Page Numbers]
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." (Phil. 2:12). What are you here told to do? Work out your salvation. How are you told to do it? With fear and trembling. Are you doing it? You are burdened down with the cares of this life and are not much alarmed over it. Do you not know that it is the cares of this life that choke out the Word of God? Then just a little of the cares of this life ought to alarm you. You thought salvation was by faith and not works. But faith and works go together. There is a work for you to do to keep saved. You must have faith, but if your faith is real it will be attended with works in fear and trembling.
A little girl comes home from school with a fever. The fond mother says to the father, "I fear it is a contagion."
He replies, "I fear it is, and we must do something."
They get in earnest and call mightily on God and the little girl is well in the morning. Thank God. A few evenings later some trouble comes up in the home. The husband speaks in a harsh, cutting tone to the wife. She replies in the same manner. There is a contagion in that home, a terrible contagion. Now is the time to fear and tremble, and to call mightily to God in deep repentance and not to cease until the heavenly winds are wafted down and that contagion is swept out of the heart and out of the home and a sweet peace is shed over all. That is works in fear and trembling.
A man buys a home. He pays cash, all he has. The contract is made out and signed, and now he goes to working out the monthly payments. He moves in, takes possession and goes to work. One day the final payment is [2] made and the warranty deed is given. A man gives all he has to Christ and gets saved. The contract is signed. He takes possession and goes to work in fear and trembling. Some day he will have it all worked out and his heavenly home is forever secured. When the "little foxes" get in, get them out at once. That is part of your work. Another part is to go about helping others all you can. Another work is to do much praying and keep the heart full of blooming flowers for the Master.
Meditating On God and His Word
To meditate on God and His Word is to calmly and quietly fix the mind upon the great fact of God and His Word until that fact has time to enter the mind and pervade it with its influence. Meditation is the quiet thinking, the applying of the mind attentively to the great truths of the Bible and the Author of it. We must meditate on God's law that we might come to know it as we should, and then to love it and then to practice it. No one can live a holy life without serious and frequent reflection of the mind upon the truths of our great salvation and the love of God. You may be able to live a good moral life; you might have an exterior life good enough to hold the confidence of man, but holy living comes from the living Word of God hidden in the heart. Holy living is not only the re fraining from doing the wrong and the doing of the right, but it is the refraining from doing the wrong from an inward principle of holy hatred of the wrong inwrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and a doing of the right in the life and holiness of God. It is more than the good deeds done by human life; it is good deeds done by the life of God in the human life. There is a vast difference. There is danger, great danger, in holiness professors attending to the outward life to the neglect of the inward life. So long as they do not do anything wrong, and so long as they do things that are right they think themselves safe. We can live good lives and, like the church at Ephesus, lose the love of God out of the soul. Right living may be only man in action; holy living is God in action. Meditation [3] is positively necessary to the keeping of God in the life.
Meditation is the holding of Bible truths in the mind until the virtue is steeped out of them and enters the mind and heart. It means to be in the midst of a matter, to have it in your very center. You need not fear losing yourself in meditation on the law of God. The more fully you lose yourself in meditation on God the more you will be like Him. You cannot love Christ very deeply without meditation. You cannot become strong or pure or deep in God without letting the mind dwell lovingly on Him.
Dear Christian reader, do you meditate? Do you go apart each day and with the mind wholly detached from every thing of earth, fix it quietly, calmly on God and some portion of His Word? Do you become lost to every thing of earth in the loving thought of God?
"There is a blest pavilion,
A sacred inner court,
The place of God's own dwelling,
With all the world shut out.
"Oh, holy resting place!
Oh, calm and pure retreat!
Where God unveils His face,
And life is only sweet."
Do you enter into this holy place with the world shut out and there commune with God, there think of His love and the great plan of salvation until your soul is aflame with heavenly love and light and peace making it the easiest thing in the world to come out and practice the wonderful truths of salvation ? If you will meditate on the theme of salvation as you should, life will become sweet and the truths of salvation will naturally live themselves out in you. But the question is: do you meditate? Very, very few of you do. Oh, how can we help you? Will you not spend fifteen minutes twice a day to deep, profound thought of God? We beg of you to do it. Will you not do it for your soul's sake and for Jesus' sake? If you do not, there will be things get into your life that ought not [4] to be there. There will be a little too much talk, a little restlessness and impatience, a little fret and worry, a burdening of the cares of this life, and perhaps bits of worldliness will get in and you will not know it, and you may go to some places where Jesus really would not go. But O, beloved, if you will practice meditating on God and His law day and night, there will be a holy flame enkindled in your soul and such heavenly sweetness and peace that the cares of this life, and fret and worry will no more light on you than flies on a heated furnace.
There are many preachers and thousands of people professing holiness that talk beautifully about meditation, saying what a blessed and glorious thing it is, and yet they do not practice it. My dear reader, you must do more than talk and more than read this and say it is good and true. You must meditate in all that the word means. Meditation brings God into the soul and causes you to live holy in every act of life.
"Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ." (2 Cor. 3 :3). "All can see that you are a letter from Christ." (20th Cent.) The Christian is Christ's "Open Letter." His life is a message from Christ to the world. His daily walk is a genuine letter from the Saviour of men. The Christian life is written by the same hand that wrote the New Testament and they read just alike, word for word. If you profess to be a Christian be sure your daily life is the handwriting of Jesus. Your life in your home amid its trials and provocations should read like God's Word. It is very confusing and discouraging to others if your life and the New Testament read differently.
The purpose of a letter is to convey the thoughts and mind of the writer. The Christian is that kind of letter. Men come to know the thoughts of God by reading the Christian's life. He shows Christ's patience in his patience. His life is not his life, but Christ's life in his life. The life of a saint is a letter in which the world can read Christ's gentleness, kindness, humility, sobriety, calmness, sympathy, [6] love, holiness, separateness from the world and hatred of sin. Do not think this standard is too high. If you will take time to pray and seek after this life with determined effort, leaning hard on Christ's helpful arm, it will surprise you what a wonderful and beautiful letter you can get to be.
Take care of the pennies and the dimes, and you will have the dollars. A pin scratch has caused the death of folks. If you begin to think a thing is too small to be given attention, you are entering a dangerous path. Little bricks build a great house, and little sins make a great sinner. You can put more love in doing little things than in great things. There is less danger of self being in doing the little things than in doing great things. By guarding against every little evil and fault, and faithfully doing every little good thing possible, you can build up a beautiful holy life. Guard your thoughts and words. Lift up your soul to God many times a day. Keep the Lord set before your face. Spend your spare moments on your knees in a sweet little talk with Jesus.
"She hath wrought a good work on me." (Mark 14 :61. This woman had an emotion in her soul and it swelled and longed for expression. She was charged with wastefulness. No, no it was not waste. Had she not poured out the fragrant ointment then, there would have been waste. Her soul panted for some way to express her devotion, and she took this way and her love was increased and tendered and she was qualified to be a greater blessing to the world. Had she not given expression to her love, she would have lost love and there would have been the waste. Whatever elevates us and serves to make us more capable of doing good is not waste.
She wrought this work on Jesus. "To what purpose was this deed done ?" That should not be the question. "For whose sake was it done?" That is the question that settles the matter. Everything done from the stirring of love in the heart for Jesus makes it a good work. Working a good work on Jesus Christ is the law of Christian devotion.
True devotion is that disposition of heart that moves it to perform with tender affection and burning fervor all its services to God. The bowing of the knees, the prostrating of the body on the ground, the lifting of the eyes heavenward, the wringing of the hands, and the pious sighs and groans are not full proof of a devoted heart. In all acts of true devotion there is a high esteem, a profound respect, a holy adoration for the Divine Majesty; there is an humble acknowledgment of the soul's dependence and duty; there is an intense desire to lavish the heart's love upon Jesus by doing all things for His sake.
No exercising of the soul is so ennobling, so hallowing, so consoling as the performing of humble, sincere acts of devotion. True devotion is attended by self sacrifice. Devotion is more than sentiment. It is a principle fixed in the core of our being. We cannot always be in acts of devotion, but the principle is in the soul and it expresses itself on every fitting occasion.
"I want a principle within
Of jealous godly fear,
A sensitiveness to sin,
A pain to feel it near;
Tender as the apple of the eye,
O God, my conscience make!
Awake my soul when sin is nigh,
And keep it still awake." [7]
"As the hart pants after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." (Psa. 42:1). Here is intensity. By intensity we mean that burning passion of the soul after God. That intense desire to be holy as He is holy, and to glorify Him in all words and acts of life. "I opened my mouth and panted: for I longed for thy commandments" (Psa. 119:131). Here is intensity. Panting after the commandments of God like a thirsty animal for water. The great task of the overseers of God's church today is to keep God's people out of a careless, go easy, indifferent life. How few thirst after God. How few thirst and hunger for the salvation of souls. Preachers may go over the country holding revivals and find entertainment and enjoyment in doing so, but even of those, how few have such a burning passion for souls that they will wrestle with God in the midnight hour or early morning hour or any convenient time for the salvation of the lost. They may think more of what gain they will make. This would be an awful crime, but it may be one of which some are guilty. There are holiness people who act very much as if no one were going to hell. Others act as if they were just as holy as they cared to be. They seem to have no thirsting for greater perfection of life. They act as if there were no improvement to be made.
The need of today is a greater passion for goodness, a more intense longing for greater Christlikeness and a greater burden for those for whom our dear Savior gave His life. "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law." (Psa. 119:136). Here is intensity. When did you shed a tear over sinners lost? Do not these words shame you? Dear people, the house is on fire, how can ye keep on sleeping ? [8]
A tourist asked at the service station the way to a certain town. The directions were carefully given. The tourist said, "You think this is the best way, do you?"
The service man replied, "It is not only the best way, but it is the only way."
The Bible is the only way to heaven. Do you live to all it teaches every day? Read the sixth chapter of Matthew over very carefully. Stop at verses 6, 20, 22, 28, and 33.
Sometimes the word "Sanctification" means that which is set apart, consecrated. In this meaning the vessels in the Temple were holy. But there is a higher sense. It means a state of perfect holiness. Christ perfects them that are sanctified. Holiness means inward likeness to God. Holy living means that the outward life is in full harmony with the will of God. It means very much to be holy as God is holy and to live in harmony with the Divine mind. It can be done, but it is not every one who professes holiness that is doing it. We ought to live in this way for Jesus' sake. He is happiest when we are holiest. He is glorified when we do all things to His glory. In those who live holy lives is His ideal realized. We should not seek holiness that we might be happy, but because it is God's will. Doing the will of God should be our meat and drink. We cannot do God's will except we be holy, therefore seek holiness and holy living. Be careful, oh, be careful about being holy in the little things of life. If people live holy at all it is in the greater things. If they come short of living holy in the little things of everyday home life, they have missed true holy living.[9]