Learning to Trust

Beginning the Christian Life

It seems to me that what you want is a simpler and more childlike faith. You say that you cannot live up to the things you read in the Bible and in good books. I know of no one who can do so. Heaven always keeps above us. The Bible sets before us very lofty ideals, so lofty that we cannot reach them in a day or a month or in twenty-five years. So long as you may live, and if you spend every year in striving toward the best things, you will still find that you have not attained. Paul was a great deal better Christian than most of us, and he said, when he was quite an old man, that he was not yet perfect, but was still striving after the things which he wished to have. We never measure up to our ideals. We never are so good any day as we intend to be in the morning when we set out. We certainly fall very far below God’s requirements. If we did not, there would be no special need of a Saviour. Jesus Christ came into the world to redeem us and save us, because we cannot save ourselves, because we cannot live up to the requirements of a divine law. Remember this, that all perfection is relative. A piano pupil may get the lesson perfectly the second day after she has begun. That is, she may do the little piece of work her teacher gave her as well as anyone could do it, yet you would not call the child a perfect piano player. She probably has ten years before her yet of self-discipline and training of the hardest kind before she reaches up to a high enough attainment to be called a good player. It is so in Christian life. God may approve us the second day of our efforts to follow Christ and say that we have done beautifully. But we are only beginning, as we have years and years of growth before us. But at any point in all this time we must be judged by the measure of our progress. You find now very much yet to learn and tell me that you are not able to live up to the things you find in good books. But remember, you have been only a few years following Christ. You must not judge yourself, therefore, too severely. Christ does not. He is very patient with our slow progress. Always do your best every day, and you will do better still to-morrow.

What I want to get you to cultivate is a quiet trust, the peace of God in your heart, and joy and gladness in all your experiences. You must not fret, you must not look too much inward at your own spiritual condition, or backward at the slow progress you have been making in your spiritual life. Make every day as beautiful as you can, pure and true and holy, with obedience and love. Then next day can be made a little better than this one, and so on through every day unto the end. You will still find on the last evening of your life that you have very much to learn, that really you have just begun to be a Christian. I think it was Eubinstein, the great musician, who said at the close of a long life, devoted to intense musical work, “I have just begun to know music.” It is so in Christian life. If you live to be eighty years old, growing every day better and better, you can say then no more than that you have begun, just begun, to know Christ and to know how to live a Christian life.

All this world’s life is just preparation for the larger, fuller, higher life waiting for us on the other side. Think of this, and while you devote yourself very earnestly to the things which you are called to do, and to the cultivation of your spiritual life, remember that you will never get to the end until you leave this world and enter upon the more perfect life in heaven.