One of the greatest blessings the soul can have is the power of entering into the refreshment the Lord Jesus Christ had while He was on the earth, and it is that which makes the scene between Himself and the dying thief so precious; not only that poor thing finding light through an open door, but the thought is so exceedingly precious, that He who saved that thief saw in him one of the fruits of the travail of His soul; so precious, that He should there see fruit of His travail, before he could turn and crave a blessing, and to hear Him speak of blessing to that poor thing before He cried out with a loud voice and gave up the ghost.
It is very solemn, in connection with those who are members of His body and one spirit with Him, that the Lord's eye comes in to search everything in them, and that He knows all intents and thoughts of the heart and mind. But if He did not, we could not get such a blessed thing as One ever living to make intercession for us; for if He did not, He would not know how to make it available for us. Directly He sees in us something that needs it, He pleads with God; and not only He sees it, but He makes us see it. All is discovered to us. He makes us see every infirmity, every mark of spiritual disease, that we may know His healing; and He makes us accord in character with the place we are in, in Him.
It is so blessed, the way that the Lord teaches us about Himself as a living Person; and there is no place where we have Him as a living Person more than in the wilderness. We are all impatient to see Him up there, but it would not be the same thing if we had not seen and known Him in the wilderness. He is the Object in whom God presents His own character, and as we pass through the turmoil of life, what can strengthen us in it? What can help us, save the seeing Him, the living Christ, for us? When He takes us into the light, and shows us that all flesh is as grass, what can sustain and settle the heart but the thought of that One, the unchangeable One, occupied with us? Sin in us, He apart from it altogether, and yet for us. The Lord in heaven was Paul's living book.
Faith should be energetic, active; I am not told to be merely musing about the glory; but the certainty of Christ's having apprehended me for it, is to set me looking right forward, pressing onward to the goal. What is feeling for Christ if it does not separate the heart from the world? It is a different thing, saying, I know the cross, and saying, I have found the thing which I can go round and round the world glorying in, filled with astonishment and delight.