Communion With Christ

"Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest we drift away from them." (Hebrews. 2:1).

The experience of most of us shows how easily communion with Christ may be broken, and how needful are the exhortations of our Lord to those who are indeed branches of the true Vine, and cleansed by the Word which He has spoken, to abide in Him. The failure is never on His side. "Lo, I am with you always."

But, alas, the bride often forgets the exhortation addressed to her in Psalms 45: "Hearken, 0 daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; So shall the KING greatly desire thy beauty: For He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him."

In this section, the bride has drifted back from her position of blessing into a state of worldliness. Perhaps the very restfulness of her new-found joy made her feet too secure; perhaps she thought that, so far as she was concerned, there was no need for the exhortation, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Or she may have thought that the love of the world was so thoroughly taken away that she might safely go back, and, by a little compromise on her part, she might win her friends to follow her Lord too. Perhaps she scarcely thought at all, glad that she was saved and free, but she forgot that the current - the course of this world - was against her; and insensibly glided, drifted back to that position out of which she was called, unaware all the time of backsliding. It is not necessary; when the current is against us, to turn the boat's head down the stream in order to drift; or for a runner in a race to turn back in order to miss the prize.

Ah, how often the enemy succeeds, by one device or another, in tempting the believer away from that position of entire consecration to Christ in which alone the fullness of His power and of His love can be experienced.

- Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)