The Knowledge of Jesus

Greetings,

      Frederick Brotherton Meyer (1847-1929) was born and educated in London, held several successful pastorates and helped introduce churches to D. L. Moody.  He was very much engaged in social work and temperance work, as well as serving as president of the Free Church Council.  He published many devotional studies.

Read Joshua 18:1-10.  Reread Joshua 18:3.

Joshua rebuked the inertness of the people.  He said to the children of Israel, “How long are ye slack to go in to possess the land, which the LORD God of your fathers hath given you?” [18:3, KJV].  At that point the twenty-one commissioners arose to walk through the land and surveyed it.  It may be that the account of what they had seen was the means under God of arousing the people from the apathy into which they had sunk.

Too long have we been slack to go in to possess that fullness of the Holy Spirit that might be in us as a living spring, making us perfectly satisfied.  There is a knowledge of Jesus, a participation in his victory, a realization of blessedness, which are as much beyond ordinary experience of Christians as Canaan was better than the wilderness.  But how sad, that of all this we know so little.

How much we miss!  The nomad life could not afford those seven tribes so much lasting enjoyment as their own freehold in Canaan.  But the comparison is utterly inadequate to portray the loss to which we subject ourselves in refusing to appropriate and enjoy the blessedness that is laid up for us in Jesus.  Let us come to our Joshua at Shiloh, and ask him to lead us into each of these.

Read Proverbs 2:2-6; Hosea 6:3; Philippians 3:13-14.

“There is a knowledge of Jesus, as much beyond ordinary experience of Christians as Canaan was better than the wilderness.  But how sad, that of all this we know so little.  How much we miss!”

F. B. Meyer understood the concepts of spiritual growth, and encouraged people to reach out beyond the ordinary, to seek to gain the experience and knowledge of the fullness of all that God has available for us.  He realized that most Christians barely scratch the surface of the depths power available to them.

Yours & His,

DED