GOD’S WORD FOR APRIL 8 ~ ~ Matthew 11:28 ~ ~ “Come unto Me.”
Today we start a new book——“Abide in Christ”—– a very popular classic Christian book, originally written sometime in the late 1800’s by Andrew Murray, and is still as powerful as it was then.
It is to you who have heard and hearkened to the call, “Come unto Me,” that this new invitation comes, “Abide in Me.” The message comes from the same loving Savior. You doubtless have never regretted having come to His call. You experienced that His Word was truth; He fulfilled all His promises; He made you partakers of the blessings and the joy of His love. Was not His welcome most hearty, His pardon full and free, His love most sweet and precious? More than once, at your first coming to Him, you had reason to say,
“The half was not told me” (1Kings 10:7).
And yet you have had to complain of disappointment. As time went on, your expectations were not realized. The blessings you once enjoyed were lost; the love and joy of your first meeting with your Savior, instead of deepening, have become faint and feeble. And often you have wondered what the reason could be, that with such a Savior, so mighty and so loving, your experience of salvation could not have been a fuller one.
The answer is very simple. You wandered from Him. The blessings He bestows are all connected with His command, “Come unto Me,” and are only to be enjoyed in close fellowship with Him. You either did not fully understand or did not rightly remember that the call meant, “Come to Me and STAY WITH ME.”
And yet this was indeed His object and purpose when He first called you to Himself. It was not to refresh you for a few short hours after your conversion with the joy of His love and deliverance and then to send you forth to wander in sadness and sin.
He had destined you to something better than a short-lived blessedness, to be enjoyed only in times of special earnestness and prayer and then to pass away as you returned to those duties in which the far greater part of life has to be spent. He had prepared for you an abiding dwelling with Himself, where your whole life and every moment of it might be spent, where the work of your daily life might be done, and where you might be enjoying unbroken communion with Him. This is what He meant when to that first word, “Come unto Me,” He added this, “Abide in Me.” As earnest and faithful, as loving and tender as the compassion that breathed that blessed “come” was the grace that added this no less blessed, “abide.” As mighty as the attraction with which that first word drew you were the bonds with which this second, had you but listened to it, would have kept you. And as great as were the blessings with which that coming was rewarded, so large, yes, and much greater, were the treasures to which that abiding would have given you access.
And observe, especially, it was not that He said, “Come to Me and abide WITH Me,” but “Abide IN Me.” The communion was not only to be unbroken, but most intimate and complete. He opened His arms to press you to His bosom; He opened His heart to welcome you there; He opened up all His divine fullness of life and love and offered to take you up into its fellowship to make you wholly one with Himself. There was a depth of meaning you cannot yet realize in His words:
“ABIDE IN ME.”