There is no desire awakened in us, except there be a nature in us suited to the desire.
Now, often we are conscious of a good spiritual desire, which though encouraged, has never been satisfied, yet we are conscious that it is a spiritual desire, and according to the Word of God. It seems to you strange and perplexing; that such desires are not gratified. I think they will be. But I see also that we need to be prepared for the answer to the very desires which we most honestly entertain and express to God.
I believe Peter most truly desired to be with the Lord, and to follow Him (John 13), and I believe this, desire was eventually gratified; but Peter had to pass through deep self-renunciation before he was really prepared to follow the Lord; and when at length he attained the consummation of his desire, I have no doubt that he found it an inconceivable compensation for all he had suffered in preparation for it.
True desires are to be appreciated, but one must remember that they cannot be effectuated except by the power of God’s Spirit; and thus obviously coeval with the mortification of flesh. The flesh, in some way, now bars the denouement of the desire.
If I desire the joy of the presence of Christ, I shall find that anything which interferes or is inconsistent with His presence, from which I at present derive satisfaction or relief, must be set aside; and if not by my own surrender, by His intervention, fulfilling to me the fruit of the desire which His own Spirit has engendered in me.
If I surrender it of myself, I have, like Peter leaving the ship to go to Jesus (Matt. 14); all the sense of His power in me—more than an equivalent to me for the step that otherwise would be so trying to nature walking on the sea to go to Jesus. I am going to Him; that is the simple desire of my heart. There is a sea between me and Him, but I see Him, and He says, “Come,” and I go. What is more blessed or more satisfying to the heart! Then I have nothing but Him, and then I know that He is all to me, even though I may get alarmed and doubtful because of the waves.
But if I do not go, He, in various ways, and by some peculiar process, leads me to the end of myself, and of those things, as the ship, which I may cling to instead of going to Him on the water. I cannot tell you how He will do it, but I know that He will surely do it, if the heart be true to Him, even though for years it is going to and fro and not satisfied; at one time mourning on account of its inability to attain to its leading desire, and therefore breathing out beautiful expressions—offspring of the true desire; but again turning aside and going down on its knees to drink water (see Judg. 7), to enjoy some present mercy, as if that would satisfy a heart awakened to the excellence of Christ.
After this manner I believe Jerusalem was a hindrance to the Apostle. When in the prison in Rome, when he had lost all hope on earth, how simply and entirely his heart finds its place with the Lord!
Whatever is most before my mind is my object. If Christ be the object of my heart, I must set everything and everyone aside for Him; if not, He surely will make me feel what it is to put anything else on a par with Him; for if I do, He will let me see how lonely and desolate I shall be without Him.
There is nothing we ought to fear so much as the atmosphere of social family interests; nature is there at home, and there is apparently no violence offered to the spiritual mind; yet it is a Delilah’s lap, and no spiritual soul ever yet dropped into its current that did not come out of it sad and barren, and all its sweet words lost. There is no place so hard to die in (morally) as where one is most at home—the nearest circle to the heart; and yet, if you do not die there, all your death elsewhere is, to a certain issue, of little avail.
Some of us are called at times to take a decidedly solitary path, and I believe it is the most blessed one, but the heart at first greatly shrinks from it.
Beware of social family interests—right in themselves surely—but the Spirit of Christ is leading you to Himself, and you must abandon all, as being entirely secondary to Him, if you would be happy or blessed.