Ephraim, what have I to do any more with idols? I answer, and will take care of him. I am like a green fir tree; From me your fruit is found."
In such seasons we do well to cry, “Quicken thou me, O Lord, according to thy word.” Then you feel that to will is present with you, but how to perform that which is good, you find not. It is a very easy thing for me to exhort you, but sometimes I do not find it very easy to do myself what I exhort you to do. And there are times with us, dear friends, when, though we know our interest in Christ, we are wretched under a deep sense of the creature’s fickleness, sinfulness, and death. Our moan is, “0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” When you have seen the utter emptiness of all creature confidence, then you have been able to say, “From him all my fruit must be found, for no fruit can ever come from me.” We shall find from Scripture, I am sure-let our past experience confirm it-that the more we depend upon the grace of God in Christ Jesus, and wait upon the Holy Spirit, pleading that his influences may operate in our hearts, the more we shall bring forth fruit unto God. If I could bear fruit without my God, I would loathe the accursed thing, for it would be the fruit of pride-the fruit of an arrogant setting up of one’s self in independence of the Creator No; the Lord deliver us from all faith, all hope, all love which do not spring from himself! May we have none of our own-manufactured graces about us. May we have nothing but that which is minted in heaven, and is therefore made of the pure metal. May we have no grace, pray no prayer, do no works, serve God in nothing except as we depend upon his strength and receive his Spirit. Any experience which comes short of a knowledge that we must get all from God, is a deceiving experience. But if you have been brought to find everything in him, beloved, this is a mark of a child of God. Cultivate a spirit of deep humiliation before the Most High; seek to know more your nothingness, and to prove more the omnipotence of the eternal God. There are two books I have tried to read, but I have not got through the first page yet. The first is the book of my own ignorance, and emptiness, and nothingness-what a great book is that! It will take us all our lives to read it, and I question whether Methuselah ever got to the last page. There is another book I must read, or else the first volume will drive me mad-it is the book of God’s all-sufficiency. I have not got through the first word of that, much less the first page, but reading the two together, I would spend all my days. This is heaven’s own literature, the wisdom which cometh from above. Less than nothing I can boast, and yet “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Having nothing yet possessing all things.” Black as the tents of Kedar, yet fair as the curtains of Solomon: dark as hell’s profoundest night, and yet “Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.”
