p. 189 | INTIMACY WITH CHRIST by Faber

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 28, 1872

INTIMACY WITH CHRIST

By Faber

It is the wisdom of life, as well as its joy, to be always feeling this great need of Jesus. A true Christian feels that he could no more live for an hour without Jesus than he could live an hour without air or under the water. There is something delightful in this sense of utter dependence upon Jesus. It is our only rest, our only liberty in the world. It is the bondage of our imperfection that we cannot be directly and actually thinking of Jesus all day and night, yet it is astonishing how near we may come to this. Our very sleep at last becomes subject to the thought of Jesus, and saturated with it. It is part of the gladness of growing older, not only that we are thereby drawing nearer to our first sight of him, but that we feel our dependence upon him more and more. We have learned more about him. We have had a longer and more varied experience of him. Our love for him has become more of a passion, which, by a little effort, promises at some not very distant day to be dominant and supreme. The love of Jesus never can be ungrowing. In our physical life, as we grow older, we become more sensible to cold and wind, to change of place, and to alternations of the weather. So as we grow older in our spiritual life, we become more sensitive to the presence of Jesus, to the necessity of him, and to his indispensable sweetness. A constantly increasing sensible love of our dearest Lord is the safest mark of our growth in holiness and the most tranquilizing prophecy of our final perseverance.—Faber.