The Great I AM
Self must be hidden in Christ. There is to be no great I in heaven except the great I AM, and we must learn to lift up Christ before the people, realizing and rejoicing in the fact that he must increase and we must decrease. I would glorify his name before you, for I want you to be like him, to love him. Jesus says, "Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." The saving salt, the savor of the Christian, is the love of Jesus in the heart, the righteousness of Christ pervading the soul. If the professor of religion would keep the saving efficacy of his faith, he must ever keep the righteousness of Christ before him, and have the glory of God for his rearward. Then the power of Christ will be revealed in life and character.
Oh, when we come to the pearly gates, and have an entrance into the city of God, will any who enter there find room to regret that they devoted their lives unreservedly to Jesus? Let us now love him with undivided affections, and co-operate with the heavenly intelligences, that we may be laborers together with God, and, partaking of the divine nature, be able to reveal Christ to others. Oh, for the baptism of the Holy Spirit! Oh, that the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness might shine into the chambers of mind and heart, that every idol might be dethroned and expelled from the soul temple!
Oh, that our tongues might be loosed to speak of his goodness, to tell of his power! If you respond to the drawing of Jesus, you will not fail to have an influence on somebody through the beauty and power of the grace of Christ. Oh, let us behold him and become changed into the image of Him in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the godhead, and realize that we are accepted in the Beloved, "complete in Him which is the head of all principality and power."
ST, February 22, 1892