The whole liturgy of absolute consecration is written out in full in this one brief petition. It is a prayer that we may be made perfect and complete in all the will of God. This is the standard of living which our Lord lays down in almost every chapter of his gospel. There can be no lower condition of discipleship deduced from any of his teachings.
On a summer’s evening, a boy stood in thoughtful mood intently gazing up into the calm, silent depths of the skies. His face wore an anxious, troubled look. His mother, drawing near, asked him what he was thinking of. “I was thinking,” he replied, “how far off heaven is, and how hard it must be to get there>“ She was a wise mother, and out of the experience of her own heart she said, “Heaven must first come to you, my boy; heaven must first come into your heart.” Never was truer word spoken. That was what Jesus meant when he said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see, or enter into, the kingdom of heaven.” That was what he meant when he said again, “The kingdom of God is within you.” What makes heaven? Not its jeweled walls, and pearl gates, and streets of golden pave, and river of crystal, and burning splendour, but its blessed obedience, its sweet holiness, its universal and unbroken accord with the divine will. Heaven, as a home, can never be entered by any one in whose heart the spirit of heaven is not found. We are fitted for the blessedness of that home of glory just in the measure in which we have learned to do God’s will on the earth as it is done in heaven.
Then, sometimes, the form of the obedience is passive. God’s ways are not as our ways. His plans frequently move right through our plans in their stately marches. Ofttimes the petition must be offered, if offered at all, when it means the relinquishment of the dearest treasures and fondest hopes of our hearts, or the patient, joyful endurance of the keenest sufferings and the sharpest self-denials. We are not only to do the will of God in our busy activities, but to allow it to be done in us and respecting us, even when it crushes us to the very earth.
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