BELOVED Christian reader, seek above all else to know Christ as your personal Friend. Do not consider this an exhortation to unholy familiarity, since from this your spirit of reverence may well shrink. True, the Lord is high and lofty, and inhabits eternity, and His people are His solely by sovereign grace. But Jesus stoops, yes, He has stooped to earth, He has been humbled here, and while here has called His own His friends. And now that He, as a Man, is exalted above the heavens, He is the “same Jesus," and seeks of His people, loved everlastingly and purchased by His blood for Himself, the affection of their hearts. He seeks your heart's affection to be devoted to Himself, and you cannot give this to Him unless you know Him as He is.
The apostle Paul says, “that I may know Him!” He did know Him as his Saviour; he did know the virtues of the cleansing blood, and knew, too, what his future would be, even glory with Christ in heaven; but, as a man on earth on the way to Christ's glory, the apostle says, “that I may know Him."
He does not say, that I may know about Jesus; no, he sought to know Him Himself. What hallowed companionship does this desire indicate! What like-mindedness with the Lord in his thoughts and ways. We feel that when a man can thus speak, the Lord has let His servant into His secrets, and opened to him His counsels.
Now, as we cannot know an earthly person age save by being in his company, so must we be in the company of our Lord, if we would know Him. Those hours of our lives, which are spent in meditation and communion are our golden seasons. Seek for times for meditation, if you would not live a life of exterior Christianity. There is such a vanity under the sun, as the whirl of religious excitement, and a Christian may lose heart-touch of Christ by reason of rounds of services and religious work. In the olden days when our Lord was here on earth, He bade His disciples enter into their inner chamber, shut their doors and pray to their Father in secret. Oh! what need is there in this day of speed for us to do likewise.
"Christ seems to me to dwell upstairs while I live downstairs," a Christian once said to us. It was not to that believer, at that moment, as if Christ and the Christian were in the same room. That Christian knew Him personally as the Saviour, and His personal care and love; but the heart-touch was somehow lacking.
The Christian will not be the less practical in his daily duties, nor will he be an unnatural person in his relationships in life, if he be really in the friendship of his Lord. The Lord's life on earth witnesses to what His people should be. Wherever He went He shed His heavenly light. His light made manifest the surrounding darkness, but in its shining the disciples walked.
We were observing a little glowworm the other evening. The creature was like a star of heaven shining on the dark bank whereon it crept, and as we considered its silvery star-like way, we thought of the Christian shining with heavenly brightness while slowly pacing this dark earth. Ours should be a heavenly light in a dark world, and as Christ is dwelling in our hearts by faith so will the true light shine.