p. 99 | VISIT YOUR HEART

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 30, 1867

VISIT YOUR HEART.

Dear reader, is your heart often refreshed and bettered by a timely visit?

Are there stated periods when you dismiss the distracting cares of life, turn your eyes within, and hold communion with the inner man?

Few things are more essential to Christian progress than to frequently retire from the world without us to the world within us.

Man, know thyself, is a wise injunction which cannot be obeyed but by paying frequent visits to the heart, and becoming thoroughly acquainted with the prompter of our actions. To neglect these visits is to violate the plainest precepts of the Bible and trifle with the best interests of our being. Is there, peradventure, a canker of sin gnawing at the vitals of our Christian enjoyment? A faithful visit to the heart with the torch of God’s word to light us, will reveal the corroding evil; and we can at once call upon the great Physician to heal the destroying malady.

Have we arrived at an important crisis in our experience, and are we perplexed to know what course we should pursue? A visit to the heart, lighted by the same sacred torch, will dispel our perplexity, enable us to act with confidence, and in such a manner that we shall not lose our reward. Or have we just passed through some important struggle, and have we fears that we may not have maintained Christian propriety? Again we should retire within, and while we permit the sacred beams of light to illuminate our hearts, decide the question. If we should find that our conduct was wrong, we should humble ourselves in deep penitence before God and seek pardon for any error or sin we may have committed; or, should we find that our conduct was consistent and right, we shall be greatly strengthened, and in the future, under similar circumstances, will have neither doubt nor fears in deciding how to act. This is what constitutes Christian progress, growing in grace and in the knowledge of the truth. But if we neglect these visits, our doubts to-day will be doubts to-morrow, and we shall go stumbling and limping, instead of running the race set before us.

Does not living in the neglect of this duty furnish a solution to the question, why so many are living in a state of such acknowledged spiritual weakness? They say they know they are not what they ought to be; they say too, that it is their own fault but should they be pressed to know just wherein the difficulty lies, they would be sorely perplexed. They know they are sick and lament it bitterly, but seem not concerned to know the disease.

They know the disease is at the heart, but act very unnaturally in not paying it a visit with the determination to know what the peace-destroying evil is, that it may be remedied. The greatest misery of man is to be weak. In my opinion it loses none of its force to restrict its meaning and say it is the greatest misery of the Christian to be weak. He may scan the sacred pages and see its precious promises spread out in lavish profusion like clusters of ripe grapes, inviting him to partake and enjoy them; but his moral purpose is too weak, and one by one they pass beyond his grasp, while he remains the same miserable spiritual imbecile; and the fact that they are for him but enhances his misery while he is too weak, too irresolute, to grasp and appropriate them. A Christian may not innocently continue in a state of such spiritual imbecility when the remedy is so simple and practicable. Why neglect to visit the heart? Why close our eyes to our real condition and permit golden opportunities for progress and happiness to pass by unimproved, and find that we are weak and helpless at the very time when strength is demanded?

How humiliating that many of us should visit our hearts only when our heavenly Father permits the waves of temptation to roll over us, or the weight of afflictions to press us down; and then when our spirits are disquieted within us, find that sin has been enervating our spiritual energies, and destroying our Christian enjoyment. This ought not so to be. The evils engendered by living in the neglect of frequent and faithful visits to the heart are infinitely destructive in their tendency, ultimately reducing their victim to a ruined wreck.

But the faithful discharge of this imperative duty will result in infinite good. It will strengthen the spiritual energies of the believer, bring him into a closer communion with Christ, open before him new and enlarged spheres of usefulness, lead him forward to greater enjoyment in Christian service, fill his mind with more ennobling views of the great I AM, warm his heart with holy zeal, enable him to glorify Christ, and ultimately usher him into the saints’ rest.

Would we meet life’s sterner trials with Christian fortitude? would we leave the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and go on to perfection? would we walk in the light and wield an influence for good? we must visit the heart often, daily; and may God help us so to do.

Copied for Review by M. J. KEEFER.