WE should live here “always delivered unto death.” God is extremely gentle with us, beloved. He will never leave us to say He neglected or overlooked us. But, if He does not find you tractable―if He finds you are like a self-willed horse―you will have your own way, you won’t go. Well, He says, I can’t make any hand of him―I will turn him out to grass. He won’t use you, but leave you just to feed―and some people say perhaps he has a fine time of it. I do not think so. He will be brought in again, some day, and the collar will be put on again, and it will gall all the harder for having been off so long. What the Lord does when He sees us willing to do anything is, He comes in and helps us.
You should live “always delivered to death.” Then all is easy. Suppose a person says, I will give up my ornaments, and such like. I have no doubt the Lord comes in and helps you in that way. But where there is a strong desire to retain the thing, He allows it to go on till circumstances bring the soul into the right place.
Just like Paul. Pant was full of Jerusalem. This was a real and true thing in one sense, and the Lord allows it to go on, and by and by, in Philippians, we find Paul in his right place. He says, I am like a balloon in a string. All I desire is “to depart, and be with Christ.” Nothing can draw him here now―not even Jerusalem. The Lord brought in the pressure of circumstances, and he says, “we are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake.” And the Lord does not remove the pressure. As a man sometimes says of a pony, I never keep the saddle off him. He is a tractable, useful animal, I have always work for him. That is exactly what the Lord says of us, when we can say with Paul, “We, who live, are always delivered unto death.” I will never take the pressure off you. I will always keep the pressure on you, because you turn it to some account; now, what people are looking for, are fine easy times―and that is really to be out to grass. I do not know if any of you are looking for easy times here, instead of saying, I am in the world, and Christ is gone away, and because Christ is gone away, what are you doing now? I say my eye is upon Him where He is.