Has God said of your flesh, " Let it wither"? What matters that if He has brought you to the place where you can glory in your infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon you?
People often talk of the heavenly calling as if it were a piece of knowledge or a theory. Was it such to Enoch when He walked with God, or with Moses when he endured as seeing Him who is invisible? Don't let our minds take it up as a piece of knowledge, instead of realizing a living Christ in heaven. It is that living Man on the throne of God who has distinctly called me by name, and not only that, but He bears my name before God, as one for whom He has done a great deal, and for whom He means to do a great deal more. Why does my soul go up and find its anchorage up there? Why? Oh, that living Man who has stolen my heart is up there! He who, as Son of God, thought it worth while to come off the throne to go to the cross as my substitute, to take the cup of wrath due to me. And God has put His Amen upon this love which is stronger than death. And is it not a reasonable thing for me to say that if the Son of God loved me and gave His life for me, I must love Him in the place where He is? How blessed, as God's eye rests on Him and then comes down to look on me, to have the certainty that, weak and foolish though I be, I shall never find Him against me; that I am so one with that risen Head, that God can say, What is true of the Head is true of the members! How unutterably blessed to be able to say that that One crowned with glory and honor on the throne of God, is the One round whom my heart's affections should center more and more! And that this risen Son of Man up there, is occupied with a suffering people down here, in all the circumstances they may have to pass through.