The Spiritual Chase 2
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II. But we observe, secondly, that there are certain obstacles and impediments in the way of this arduous pursuit —and therefore the Psalmist adds—"Your right hand upholds me."
These words imply our need of divine strength , in order that the soul may not merely commence, but also be strengthened to keep up the pursuit. We soon grow faint and weary after the heart has been a little drawn forth to the Lord; and like Abraham, "when the Lord left off communing with him," we "return to our place." This strength is from time to time mysteriously communicated. Perhaps after the soul has been going forth in earnest pantings and intense longings after God's manifested presence, a deadness and coldness comes over the mind, as though we had neither a God to find, nor a heart to seek Him. In order, then, that we may not utterly faint by the way, there is a continual reviving of God's work in the soul, enabling it to follow hard after Him. And this is implied in the expression, "Your right hand upholds me."
Just in the same way as the Lord strengthened Elijah to run before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel (1 Kings 18:46), a race he could not have performed unless the Lord had girded him with strength, so we can only "run with patience the race that is set before us," and follow hard after the Lord, as He blessedly and secretly communicates strength to our souls .
1. But unbelief will sometimes dampen this arduous and anxious pursuit. Unbelief, when the power of it is felt, seems absolutely to unnerve a man's limbs, and to paralyze every spiritual faculty. When he would run, unbelief hamstrings him, so that he cannot "press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Now the Lord in upholding him with His "right hand," secretly weakens the power of unbelief, by kindling and communicating faith. Thus, as his soul finds the power of unbelief sensibly weakened, and the power of faith sensibly increased, he is enabled to press anxiously on, and follow after the Lord.
2. Sometimes doubts and fears and heavy despondency lie as a burden on the soul, and keep it back from pursuing this arduous chase. Doubts whether the heart is altogether right with God; killing fears as to whether He will receive us when we draw near; painful apprehensions and suspicions as to whether our religion be God's work in the soul—these things lying as weights and burdens upon a man's soul, check and impede him in running the race set before him. The apostle therefore says, "Let us lay aside every weight" (Heb. 12:1). These weights lie heavy on the shoulders, and keep the soul from following "hard after the Lord;" no, under these weights and burdens it would sink, did not the right hand of the Lord uphold it; but He secretly communicates strength, so that these burdens do not altogether press it down; and enables it, in spite of all its weights, to run patiently and perseveringly on.
3. But carnality , worldliness , and earthly affections will at times also dampen the soul's earnest pursuit after God—heavenly things lose their savor, spiritual affections are not sensibly felt, and the heart grows cold Godwards, and warm earthward. The Lord seems to be at a distance—the world and worldly things fill the thoughts, and almost banish spiritual feelings from the mind. The Lord, then, must again revive His work in the soul, and bring it out of this carnality, deadness, hardness, and carelessness—He must stir it up again and again into desires after Him. But as soon as He leaves us to ourselves—we relapse into our former carnal state. Only as long as he keeps us near Him do we overcome this wretched carnality—and when He leaves us to ourselves, our hands hang down, and we sink again into our former deadness and worldliness.
4. Sometimes presumption, vain confidence , and fleshly security act as hindrances, so that the soul is unable to follow "hard after the Lord." When this feeling of carnal security comes over a man's mind, he is not anxious about his eternal state, his soul is not looking to God; and secure of reaching "the world to come," the world presently lays such tight hold on him as to bury him in its cares and pursuits, and take away his heart from following after the Lord.
All these things, then, conspire as so many hindrances; and the soul is often so encumbered and entangled by them that it is not able to follow "hard after the Lord." But God will not leave a man here—He will not allow him to be altogether swallowed up in the things of time and sense. He stirs up his mind, and by stirring it up He more and more engages him in this pursuit after Himself.
1. Sometimes, for instance, He sends heavy AFFLICTIONS ; and when these fall upon a man they show him where he has been; they are often blessed to lay bare his secret backslidings from God; and to open up to him how he has been content with only a name to live—how he has been secure in a form of godliness, while his heart was not alive to God, nor eagerly pursuing after the power and savor which he once felt. When affliction, then, embitters to him the things of time and sense, he begins to look out for solid comfort, and he finds none but in the Lord—for everything else is full of labor and sorrow. But the Lord has been provoked by his backsliding conduct to withdraw Himself, so that the soul cannot find Him—though it can find solid satisfaction nowhere else. This stirs it up only the more earnestly to follow after the Lord as the only source of true consolation.
2. But again. TEMPTATIONS coming suddenly into the mind, and sweeping away all false evidences, removing vain hopes, and laying bare the corruptions of the heart, will often at first plunge the soul down into the depths of creature helplessness. But the Lord mysteriously works by these very temptations , that we may follow "hard after Him"—for when we are thus tempted and exercised in our minds, we desire immediate relief. It is like a patient afflicted with an acute disease, or like a man with a fractured limb—he wants to send for the doctor at once, it will not do to wait until tomorrow—he must come immediately, for the case admits of no delay.
And so, in the case of powerful temptations, when Satan attacks the soul with all the malice and craft of hell, it does not do to wait until tomorrow, or the day after—the relief must be immediate, the case is pressing, and the remedy must be at hand. Thus powerful temptations are overruled to make us follow "hard after God."
3. Sometimes the Lord lays a man on the bed of SICKNESS , and brings death , the king of terrors, before his soul in all its ghastliness. And the heart being made honest before God, and alive in His fear, he begins to examine his religion, to overhaul his evidences, and to look back on the way in which the Lord has led him from the first. But in so doing he looks not only at the Lord's dealings with him, but how he has requited the Lord; he calls to mind his idolatries and spiritual adulteries, his continual backslidings, his vile ingratitude, with all the baseness and rebelliousness which his soul has been guilty of. All these things are brought to light in his conscience, and laid upon it—and he must now have the Lord Himself to speak peace to his soul. Death stares him in the face; his sins rise up to view in clouds, and his conscience bears testimony against him. He must now have the Lord Himself to acquit him; he must have His blood sprinkled upon his conscience; he must have His righteousness revealed, and His love and manifested presence sensibly felt.
But to obtain this, his soul "follows hard" after the Lord. These mercies being delayed, he is made to see and feel more and more the solemn reality of his state—and under the teachings of the Spirit, he wonders how he could go dreaming on through so long a period, without panting more after the immediate presence of the Lord. Thus, through these painful exercises, his soul follows hard after the Lord, as though he would take no denial.
Now the man that thus follows hard after the Lord, knows what he desires—he is not undecided as to what vital godliness is—he is not resting on refuges that thousands shelter themselves in. He has a determinate object, and no one can put him off from that object. He cannot be flattered into a belief that he has what his conscience tells him he has not; nor is he to be persuaded that he has the enjoyment of what he desires, when all within is one mournful, solitary blank.
Thus, whatever darkness of soul a living soul may be plunged into, however he may be harassed through the workings of Satan's temptations, whatever he may feel of the sinfulness of his corrupt nature; and whatever carnality of mind he may seem to sink into, so as sometimes to appear to himself, or even to others, to have scarcely a spark of grace in his soul—yet in his worst state, in his darkest hours, in his most confused and self-condemning moments, the child of God, taught by the Spirit, will differ from everyone else on the face of the earth! Nothing but God can really satisfy his panting soul; nothing but the Lord's smiles, and the manifestations of His presence, can comfort his heart; and to all others he says, "Miserable comforters are you." He can take up with no hope but what the Lord communicates to his soul, nor rest in any other testimony but that which he receives from God's own lips.
Thus the child of God, in whatever state he may be, carries certain marks which distinguish him from the dead professor of the highest doctrines, and from the lowest groveler in Arminianism. The grand distinguishing mark of a living soul is this—that he alone either is in the enjoyment of the Lord's presence, or is panting after the manifestation of it —that he alone is either happy in God, or restless and dissatisfied without Him.
I do not mean to say that a living man always feels unhappy when he is without the manifestative presence of God—for sometimes he seems to have not one spark of feeling in his heart at all, and there is no more going out after the Lord than if there were no God, no heaven, no hell—or as if we had no immortal soul to be saved or lost. Such a deathlike stupor, such a complete paralysis, such a benumbing torpor seems to creep over the soul, that it seems at times as if it were altogether dead Godwards.
But the Lord from time to time revives His own blessed work. In the midst of all this deathliness, He brings a secret testimony into the conscience; and thus, by the teachings of the Spirit, in the midst of all this worldliness that the soul gets buried under, and all the carnality it may be overwhelmed by—there is an inward feeling of self-condemnation. In the midst of the world, or in company perhaps, a secret groan bursts from the soul, an inward pang of self-loathing is felt on account of its carnality, and a secret desire goes forth to the Lord that He would come down into the heart, and bless it with His presence.
But there are special seasons when the soul "follows hard after" the Lord. We are unable to produce them of ourselves, and we are unable to bring them back. We can no more kindle in our own soul a holy panting after God—than we can make a world. We can no more create a spiritual desire—than we can create a new sun, and fix it in the sky. We may indeed take up the Word of God, and try to peruse its pages—but we can find no comfort from it—it is all a dead letter. We may fall on our knees, and utter words—but we have no power to cause the heart to go with the words. We may come to hear the word preached; and as we come through the streets, perhaps a secret sigh may go forth that the Lord would bless it to our souls—but when we have got to chapel, and are sitting to hear, Satan may come down, like a foul bird of the air, and spread his baneful and blighting wings over the soul, so as to fill it with the miserable feelings that dwell in his own infernal mind.
And thus we know by painful experience that it is outside of OUR power to kindle this panting after God . But we know also, at times, that the Lord is pleased to work in us breathings after Himself. It may be, when we walk up and down our room, sit by our fireside, or are engaged in our daily labor, that our soul will be panting after the Lord; there will be a going up toward Him, and a telling Him that nothing on earth, and nothing in heaven can satisfy us but Himself. There is a secret turning away from our relations and friends, and everything else, to go only after God; and thus the renewed soul pants again and again after His manifested presence.
Now, my friends, if you know these things experimentally—if you know what it is, time after time, as the Lord works in you, to "follow hard after" Him; and yet with all your following find little else but obstacles and difficulties—feel burdens placed upon your shoulders, and impediments continually presented in your path, you have the experience of David—you are in the path which many of God's saints have trodden before you. And the Holy Spirit has left upon special record this and other parts of David's experience, for the comfort and encouragement of those who have the same Spirit, and are called to walk in the same footsteps. Thus it not only shows that the soul must have tasted something of the goodness of God—but that in thus following hard after Him, it has but one object of pursuit—but one desire to obtain.
When a man is diligently engaged, early and late, in his business, does it not show he has an object on which his heart is fixed? In whatever pursuit a man is engaged, does not his anxiety clearly show that he earnestly desires to overtake the object he pursues? When a man, then, can honestly say, "My soul follows hard after God ,"—it shows that he experiences an earnestness and intensity of pursuit after God.
There is perhaps someone here who is grievously perplexed and harassed in his mind to know whether the Lord has really visited his soul; and he says, "Are my sins pardoned? Do I stand accepted in the Beloved? Am I an heir of God, and joint-heir with Christ? Has the blessed Spirit begun a work in my soul? has He indeed quickened me into spiritual life?" There would be no following hard after the Lord, my friend, unless God had done something for your soul. There would be no panting after His love, and desire to realize it, unless you had tasted something of it. There would be no desire to feel the efficacy of atoning blood to purge your conscience from sin, unless you had seen and felt in a measure the vileness of your sins, and had seen by faith the fountain once opened. Nor would there be any longing cry and sigh to the Lord that He would reveal Himself in your soul, unless you had seen some beauty in the Lord Jesus, and felt in your heart that nothing but His presence could really content and satisfy you.
If, then, you really and experimentally know what it is, in the secret pantings of your soul, to be following hard after the Lord, let me speak this for your comfort—you are sure to overtake Him! The Lord has not kindled this panting in your soul to disappoint you. He has not made you feel your misery and wretchedness here, to give you a foretaste of misery and wretchedness hereafter. He has not made you to feel out of love with your own righteousness, that you may be disappointed in receiving Christ's righteousness.
But, on the contrary, when He makes you to fall out of love with yourself, it is to make you fall in love with Him. He has disappointed your false hopes only that He may implant in your soul "a good hope through grace." Your very thirst after Him, your anxious desire to overtake Him, is a pledge and a sure foretaste that you will obtain Him, and clasp Him in your arms as all your salvation and all your desire!
But if a man can go on for weeks, months, and years in a profession of religion, satisfied without the Lord's presence—without either having urgent desires, or longing to have those desires gratified —if his soul never pants after the Lord, or is never satisfied with manifestations of the Lord's favor, I would not stand in that man's religion for a thousand worlds! For however high his assurance may rise, his religion is not worth having, for it is neither life nor power. The man who can thus go on for months without any ardent longings, earnest pantings, or fervent cries after the Lord, shows that he is dead in a profession—that he is satisfied with the mere husks, and knows not the savory kernel—that he is content with being thought well of men, without seeking and craving after the valid testimonies and inward approbation of God in the conscience.
But it is not what we think of ourselves, it is what the Lord thinks of us; "for not he who approves himself is commended, but whom the Lord commends"—still less is it what others think, for their opinion, good or bad, will affect us but little. We shall not be judged by man's opinion—but stand at the bar of God. And if He is pleased to drop in some testimony to the conscience, and assure us of our saving interest in the Son of His love, we shall care little either to court the 'smiles'—or to fear the 'frowns' of men. But having tasted the riches of His grace, we shall be satisfied with it, and require nothing further for time or eternity!
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