“When my heart is inclined to grow cold I think of what I am saved from, and the wondrous love of God in delivering me from hell,” exclaimed a young Christian. “And I love to think of what I am saved for—to be near Christ, like Christ.”
“When I get down in my soul I seek to dwell upon what I am brought to in the grace of God,” said another.
Let us suppose a kind and rich man walking through the streets of a city one dark and cheerless night. It is bitterly cold, and, as he hurries to the brightness and warmth of his gladsome home, he wraps his ample cloak about him. Presently his eye lights upon a kind of bundle in a dark corner of the street—what can it be? It is a poor, ragged, little child, starving and freezing in the pitiless night. Touched with compassion, he brings the little wanderer into his house, and saves him from the death that was so near; but more, in the love of his soul, he adopts the child into his own family, and bids the boy call him father.
Now what will occupy the boy’s heart most? The street, the rags, the misery from which he was saved? or, the house, the wealth, the treasures, the glories into which, being saved, he has been brought?
There is more said in God’s Word about what we are saved for, than what we are saved from. And while we should ever be blessing God for rescuing us from misery, we should never fail to bless Him for the glory for which we are saved. “If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”
The once ragged boy, made at home in the love of him who adopted him as his child, by heart and mind occupation with the father and the new home, loses all trace of the manners of the street from whence he came, and becomes like his father.
Let us fix our hearts upon God and rejoice in what he has done for us, and we shall find such wealth and gladness in doing so, that the world will be to us only what the cold, dark street became to the child.
“Giving thanks unto the Father.... Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son; in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” (Col. 1:12-14).
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