Returning to God

Returning to God

Every evil, whether inward or outward, should only teach you one truth: man has unmistakably lost his first divine life in God, and no possible comfort or deliverance is to be expected except through Christ. Though man lost God, God became man so that man might again be alive in God, as he was in the beginning. All the misery and distress of human nature, whether of body or mind, comes about solely because God is not in man, nor man in God, as the condition of his nature requires. Man has lost the first life of God by turning his will, thoughts, and desires into a taste for the good and evil of this beastial world.

Now, there are two things that have taken the place of the life of God in man. First, "self", or selfishness, was brought forth by man's choosing to have a wisdom of his own, contrary to the will and instruction of his Creator. Secondly, an earthly, bestial, mortal life and body were brought forth when man ate the food that poisoned his paradisaical nature. Both of these must therefore be removed; that is, a man must first totally die to self, to all earthly desires, views, and intentions, before he can again be in God as his nature and first creation requires.

But now, as long as he is a selfish, earthly-minded creature, must be deprived of his true life - the life of God, the spirit of heaven, in his soul. In light of this truth, everything is changed! For then, there is no life that ought to be as dreaded as a life of worldly ease and prosperity. There is great misery, a great curse, in everything that gratifies and nourishes our self-love, self-esteem, and self-seeking! On the other hand, there is great happiness in all spiritual and physical troubles when they force us to feel and to know the hell that is hidden within us and the vanity of everything around us. Our troubles turn all our self-love into self-abhorrence, and they force us to call upon God to save us from ourselves, to give us a new life, new light, and a new spirit in Christ Jesus.

The Spirit of Prayer

Your present and past distresses should bring you to acknowledge this twofold truth that I have stressed over and over again: first, you are nothing but darkness, vanity, and misery in and of yourself; secondly, you cannot help yourself to light and comfort by any effort of your own. I know that many people seem to assent to these two truths, but their belief has no depth or reality, and so it is of little or no use. However, some people, and perhaps you, have opened their hearts to a deep and full conviction of these truths. If you believe these two truths with as much certainty as you know that two plus two equals four, then you, like the prodigal son, have come to your senses, and more than half your work is done.

Now, if you fully possess these two truths, you will feel them in the dame degree of certainty as you feel your own existence. Under this awareness, you are to give up yourself absolutely and entirely to God in Christ Jesus, as if you were falling into the hands of infinite love. It is a great and infallible truth that God's will for you consists only of infinite love and an infinite desire to make you a partaker of His divine nature. It is absolutely impossible for the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to refuse to give you all the good and life and salvation that you need.

Drink deeply from this cup, for the precious water of eternal life is in it! Turn to God with this faith; cast yourself into this abyss of love; and then you will be in the state that the prodigal son was in when he said, "I will arise and go to my father,and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son" (Luke 15:18). And everything will be fulfilled in you that is recorded of the prodigal son.

Therefore, make this the twofold practise of your heart: first, bow yourself down before God in the deepest acknowledgment of our own nothingness and vileness; then, look up to God in faith and love, and consider Him as always extending the arms of His mercy toward you. God is full of an infinite desire to dwell in you as He dwells in the angels in heaven. Content yourself with this inward and simple exercise of your heart for a while, and seek the things that nourish and strengthen this state of your heart.

"Come unto me," said Jesus, "all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). This is more for you to rest upon - more light for your mind and more blessing for your heart than all the volumes of human instruction can provide. Take hold of the words of Jesus, and beg Him to be the light and life of your soul. Love the sound of His name, for Jesus is the love, the sweetness, and the compassionate goodness of the Deity, who became man so that man might have "power to become the sons of God" (John 1:12). Love every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you will dwell in God; hate nothing but the evil that stirs in your own heart.

Teach your heart the following prayer, until you continually say it: "Holy Jesus, meek Lamb of God, Bread that came down from heaven, Light and Life of all holy souls, help me to have a true and living faith in You. Open Yourself within me, with Your holy nature, Spirit, and inclinations, so that I may be born again in You. Make me a new creature, revived, led, and governed by Your Holy Spirit." When you practise this prayer, it will become the life of your soul and the true food of eternity. Remain in this state of supplication to God, and then you will infallibly be raised out of the vanity of time into the riches of eternity.

Do not expect to have the same degree of fervor each and every time you pray. This is not where the heart of the matter lies. Your human body will have its share in the praying, but the ups and downs of that are to be overlooked. When your will is set in the right place, the changes of human fervor do not lessen your union with God.

The heart, which is an unfathomable depth of eternity within us, is as much above outward fervor as heaven is above the earth. It is the heart that works our way to God and unites us with heaven. This depth of the heart is the divine nature and power within us, which never calls upon God in vain. Whether assisted or deserted by outward fervor, the heart penetrates through the outward nature as easily and effectively as our thoughts can leave our bodies and reach into the regions of eternity.

The poverty of our fallen nature, the depraved workings of the flesh, the corrupt tendencies of our polluted birth into this world, do us no harm as long as the spirit of prayer works contrary to them and longs for the first birth of the light and Spirit of heaven. All our natural evil ceases to be our own evil as soon as our wills turn from it. Then it changes its nature, loses all its poison and death, and only becomes our holy cross on which we happily die to self and this world and enter the kingdom of heaven.

Do you want to be free of error, reservations, and delusion about where you stand with God? Consider the Deity to be the greatest love, the greatest meekness, the greatest sweetness. Consider His eternal, unchangeable will to be a blessing to every creature. Then recognize that all the misery, darkness, and death of fallen angels and fallen men came about because they lost their likeness to this divine nature. You and the entire fallen world have nothing to wish for except that rays and sparks of this divine, meek, loving, tender nature of God will be drawn into the life of your soul by the spirit of prayer. Consider Jesus as the gift of God to your soul, which begins and completes the birth of God and heaven within you, in spite of every spiritual or physical enemy. When you have heartily embraced these infallible truths and made them the nourishment of your soul, you way to heaven will be shortened and secured, and there will be no room for error, reservations, or delusion.

You can expect no life, light, strength, or comfort except from the Spirit of God dwelling and manifesting His own goodness in your soul. The best men and the best books can only do you good insofar as they turn you to seek and receive every kind of good from God alone - not a distant or an absent God, but a God living, moving, and always working in the spirit and heart of your being.

Those who seek God with their minds and their ideas will never find God, because God is the highest Spirit and the highest life, and only a similar spirit and life can unite with Him or know anything about Him. Therefore, faith, hope, and love, when they are turned toward God, are the only possible and infallible means of obtaining a true and living knowledge of Him. The reason for this is clear: trough the spiritual of life within us, we seek the God of life where He is; we call upon Him with His own voice; we draw near to Him by His own Spirit. For no physical body, no flesh and blood, can breathe forth faith and love and hope to God without having the Spirit and life that is of God.

The most infallible truth in the world is that neither reasoning nor learning can ever introduce a spark of heaven into our souls. Therefore, you have nothing to seek, and nothing to fear, from reason. Life and death are the things in question; although neither contributes to the growth of reasoning or learning, each is s state of the soul. Their only difference is that life is the enjoyment of the soul's highest good, and death is the lack thereof.

Therefore, reason and learning have no power here. Their attempts to keep the soul insensitive to life and death - one of which is always developing in the soul according to the will and the desires of the heart - are in vain. If you were to add intelligence to a vegetable, you would be adding nothing to its life or death. Its life and fruitfulness lie only in the soundness of its root, the goodness of the soil, and the riches it derives from air and light. It is the same for man.

This is how heaven and hell grow in the soul of every man. His heart is the root, and if the heart is turned away from all evil, it is then like a plant in good soil. When it hungers and thirsts after the divine life, it then infallibly draws the light and Spirit of God into it, which are infinitely ready and willing to live and bear fruit in the soul. For the soul has its breath, its being, and its life for no other purpose than that the triune God may manifest the riches and powers of His own life in it.

Giving Up All For God

Everything that lives partakes of life, every being hungers after the source of its existence, and every creature can only find its rest in the place from which it came. Dead as well as living things bear witness to this truth: the stones fall to the earth and "the sparks fly upward" (Job 5:7) only because everything must go back to the place from which it came. If the souls of men were not breathed forth from God as real offspring of the divine nature, it would be as impossible for them to have any desire for God as for stones to go upward and the flame to go downward. The spirit of prayer is the one thing that proves that you came from God, and it is your certain way of returning to Him.

Therefore, when it is the never ceasing desire of our hearts that God may be the beginning and end, the reason and motive, the rule and measure, of all that we do, then we are offered up to the eternal Spirit of God. Our lives will be in Him and from Him, and we will be united to Him by the spirit of prayer that is the comfort, support, strength, and security of the soul. By the help of God, we will travel through the vanity of time into the riches of eternity.

In order to have this spirit of prayer, let us willingly give up all that we inherit from our fallen nature, so that we may hunger and thirst after God alone. Our only care ought to be how we can be wholly His devoted instruments, His adoring, joyful, and thankful servants in everything. We must be sure to shut our eyes and cover our ears to everything that is not a step in the ladder that reaches from earth to heaven.

Reading, listening, talking, and meditating are all good things, but they are only good at certain times and to a certain degree. They must be used with much caution, or they will bring forth in us the fruits of intemperance. But the spirit of prayer is for all times and all occasions; it is a lamp that is to be always burning, a light to be ever shining. Everything calls for it, and everything is to be done in it and governed by it. Indeed, the spirit of prayer is nothing else but the spirit of a man wholly and incessantly given up to God, to be all that He pleases.

This state of absolute yieldedness, naked faith, and pure love of God is the highest life of those who are born again from above and have become sons of God through the divine power. It is exactly what our blessed Redeemer called us to aspire to when He spoke these words: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). It is to be sought with the simplicity of a little child, without being captivated by any mysterious speculations. Everything about it should bring us nearer to God, should force us to forget and renounce everything for Him;  should cause us to do everything in Him, with Him, and for Him; and should spur us to give every breath, movement, intention, and desire of our hearts, souls, spirits, and lives to Him.

Notice what our blessed Lord said of the place, the power,and the origin of truth. He did not refer us to the current doctrines of the times, or to the systems of men, but to His own name, His own nature, and His own divinity hidden in us. "My sheep," He said, "hear my voice" (John 10:27). Here, the whole matter is decisively determined, both where truth is and who can have any knowledge of it.

Heavenly truth is spoken only by the voice of Christ,and it is only heard by the power of Christ living in the hearer. He is the eternal Word of God, who speaks forth all the wisdom and wonders of God. He alone is the Word, who speaks forth all the life, wisdom, and  goodness that can be in any creature. The soul can have no goodness or wisdom or life except what it has in Him and from Him. This is the one unchangeable boundary of truth, goodness, and every perfection of men on earth or angels in heaven.

Literary learning, from the beginning to the end of time, will always have very little of heavenly wisdom and very much of worldly foolishness. Its nature is one and the same through all ages; what it was in the Jew and the heathen, it is in the Christian, too. Its name and its nature are unalterable, for it is always foolishness in the eyes of God.

Recommendations to the Christian

Allow me to take a few more pages in this chapter in order to recommend the following actions to you.

First, willingly receive every spiritual and physical trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, and desolation. These are true opportunities and blessed occasions for dying to yourself and entering into a fuller fellowship with your self-denying, suffering Saviour. Do not look at spiritual or physical trouble in any light; reject every thought about it. Then, every kind of trial and distress will become the blessed day of your prosperity.

Secondly, be afraid of seeking or finding comfort in anything but God alone, for anything else that gives you comfort will take your heart away from God just a little bit more. What constitutes a pure heart? In a pure heart, God alone is totally and purely sufficient, and God alone gives delight.

Thirdly, when you have the highest faith in God and the fullest submission to Him, then you are in the best spiritual state. Strive to reach this state.

Fourthly, what do you need most, and what do you desire most? Is it not that God may be all in all in you? But how can this be, unless all human good and evil become nothing in you and mean nothing to you? You would do well to pray this prayer: "O my soul! Rid yourself of everything that is earthly and therefore changeable." While you are waiting for and expecting your Bridegroom, who is the Creator of all beings, let it be your one and only concern that He may find your heart free from all worldly things whenever it pleased Him to visit you.

Be assured of this: sooner or later, we will come to believe that everything in ourselves is evil by nature, and must be entirely given up. We will know for certain that nothing that is human or created can make us better than we are by nature. Therefore, all those spiritual or physical trials that being us to this conviction are a blessing to us. It is best that we may be driven to seek everything from God with the whole strength of our souls, without the least thought or hope of any other relief. When we have come to this point, we will be made true partakers of the Cross of Christ, and from the bottom of our hearts we will be able to say, with Paul, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." (Galatians 6:14).

Give yourself up to God without reservation. This implies a state of the heart that does nothing of itself, or from its own reason, will, or choice. Rather, it always stands in faith, hope, and absolute dependence upon God, being led by the Spirit into everything that is according to His will. The heart that is yielded to God will seek nothing by its own plans, thoughts, or reason. Instead, it will deal with everything that every day brings as something that comes from God and as something that is to be received and gone through just as Jesus would have done.

I consider this an attainable degree of perfection for all of us. By having Christ and His Spirit always in our view, and nothing else, we will never be left to ourselves, nor will we be without the full guidance of God.

~William Law~

(The End)