Gleanings 174

 •  3 min. read  •  grade level: 6
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Rev. 2:17. If it were not for that wondrous unsearchable Person, God manifest in flesh, and for His sake, He having taken. the cup of wrath for us, what would have been our future?
If we look at the glory, we could not do without Him. Ah, and God would have the manna laid up in the golden pot, to show His delight in Christ. Is there nothing that speaks to our hearts in the delight God has in the Son of His love? If I feel that I could not do without the manna; to think that God could not either I Do not talk as if it were only you that cared about the manna-God does. He had the golden pot of manna laid up before Him, to show His delight in it; and He gives us to feed on that hidden manna.
I have tasted God's delight in Christ. I know He is precious to God, and I too' can say, "Precious Jesus!" If anyone asks, " Why do you say Precious Jesus?" I answer, " Can you say it?" If you can, you will know what God thinks of Him. You and God will be of one mind. And if you get the taste of it here, what will it be when you get home? There it will not be the manna hidden in the golden pot, but the open display of God and the Lamb,- God leading us inside the glory. Not like sunshine down here, bright one moment, and a storm coming on the next, but the fixed calm shining of the glory forever.
Not only will all of you, as overcomers, eat of the hidden manna, but each is to receive a new name, a name that none will know but the one who receives it: a secret between Him that gives it and yourself.
Would you not like to know that there is something individual in Christ’s heart connected with you? You might have all glory, but a heart that loves Christ would rather have something particular giving it the taste of His love individually. You will find some one with perhaps nothing but a broken text, full of the taste of Christ's love. I had rather be an old woman hardly able to-read, who tastes thus the love. Christ, than be a person of the greatest knowledge without tasting it.
Ought it not to be something precious to us that we are called Christians, that the name of the anointed Man should have descended to us?
In the Lord's people it is to be the positive, not merely the negative; not gathering up things, but throwing them off; getting the heart fitted to feed on Christ, and the feet free to walk with Christ.
It is up there above whence power comes that pushes us right off the world's platform, keeping us occupied with and knowing a great deal more about heaven than about earth: walking in Nazariteship and saying, " Blessed Lord, the only thing I have to do is to live to thee and to die to thee." Only as we do this are we imitators of Christ's life. A certain joy this gives, which nothing can take away, able then to rejoice alway, come what may; saying " Christ is mine, and if He laid out His life for me, I want to lay out mine for Him, that whether I live or die, He may be magnified.