Experiencing the Transformative Love of Christ

We are to apprehend it with our minds as we see it revealed in the scriptures and we are to meditate upon it but beyond that and above that we are to know it in an immediate and in a direct sense. We are to know it in this way that the Lord himself should tell us that and manifest it to us personally directly and immediately. [00:02:47]

There is nothing which is more terrible than just to consider something like this without applying it. There is a current notion that you can teach the scriptures in an objective manner without applying them. That is a terrible thing to do. We are not to have some intellectual acquaintance with these things as possibilities. They're meant to be practical. [00:05:15]

Suppose professors of religion to be arranged in different concentric circles around Christ as their Common Center. Some value the presence of their savior so highly that they cannot bear to be at any remove from him. Even their work they will bring up and do it in the light of his countenance. [00:06:58]

There is the innermost Circle, those who live for him and even do their work in his presence and keep on lifting up their eyes to him. They're afraid of losing even a beam of his love. Now then there's a CLE little bit outside that, others who to be sure would not be content to live out of his presence. [00:07:40]

The reason why the men of the world think so little of Christ is that they do not look at him, their backs being turned to the sun they can see only their own shadows and are therefore wholly taken up with themselves while the true disciple looking only upward sees nothing but his Savior and learns to forget him. [00:11:24]

There are some people who seem to think that these intimate experiences of the Lord Jesus Christ are only to be found among certain people who don't know much about Doctrine and who are full of a vague mystical and loose Notions and ideas. Here is a man who like Edward pacon was a man who was characterized by his fondness for Doctrine and Theology. [00:13:03]

Blessed it is says he wion to be really in him. No awakened Soul should stop short of a realization and experimental enjoyment of Union with the Lord. No converted Soul should rest satisfied till it think every thought and speak every word in communion with Jesus. [00:16:24]

We are like people who've been left a great fortune in a will but we don't seem to realize it. It seems too good to be true. We've been so accustomed to poverty and to penury and to struggling to make both ends meet that though we are told that we've been left a fortune we go on living as if nothing had happened at all. [00:18:12]

There is true Christian mysticism. I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me. I can do all things through Christ which dwelleth in me. I live yet not I to me to live is Christ. Now that's pure Christian mysticism that I may know him. Why does he want to know him? Because he already knows him. [00:27:09]

The men who have been most busy in the service of their Lord and Master in the long history of the church have always been those who have known him best and who have rejoiced most of all in his love. Now let me start with a supreme example. What was it that made the Lord Jesus Christ himself do all that he did? [00:33:47]

The love of Christ constrain of me. I can't help myself. It's Christ's love that is pressing me and urging me. There was never a more busy or active men than this great Apostle and it was not because he was an active Men by Nature. I don't believe he was for a moment. He was much more of a contemplative but the love of Christ sends him on. [00:36:47]

The greatest Servants of God that Adorn the life and the history of the Christian church have been men who have realized that this is the most important thing of all and they've spent hours in prayer seeking his face, enjoying his love and the man who knows this can do more in an hour than the other type of busy men can do in a century. [00:41:23]