Life More Abundantly

Hphese are times in which every follower of Jesus should be seeking an increase of spiritual life, and a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. The man who is empty himself can not fill others. A half converted professor is not likely to lead many sinners to the Saviour. How can the poor brother who is busy in blowing up his farthing rushlight to keep it from going out, how can he “so shine as to glorify” God, or be a burner to illuminate the way to Jesus? He may have a little life — just enough to keep him gasping feebly. What he needs is “life more abundantly.” Jesus promises this. He came to give it to those who seek aright for it. 1. One mark of this more abundant life is an increase of vigor. A cherry-tree in my yard used to drop down a few blossoms in May, but produced no cherries. Then we dug about it, and put in a load of fertilizer around the roots; and lo! the next July it was crimsoned with rich fruit. Its more abundant life made it bear profusely. The reason why any Christian does not produce the fruits of the Spirit is simple want of inward vigor of grace. He needs the tillage of prayer, and Bible-study, and a deep subsoiling of new repentance and new faith in Christ, a new work of the Holy Grhost. Half of the forces in Christ’s army are either in the hospitals or off on furlough. The spiritual quickening which brings these useless invalids out of their beds, and these deserters back into the ranks, constitutes a genuine revival. “When a church begins to feel this new life, sinners are awakened. The dead are raised. Jesus lives again in that community, in the persons of his active, Christ-like followers.

2. A second evidence of the “life more abundantly” is an increase of faith. A small faith can move molehills. But it needs a stout faith to remove mountains. To grapple with stubborn sins and to convert the “hard cases,” and to scale the strongholds of Satan, is given only to those who have a prodigious hold on God. Luther spent three hours a day in prayer, in order to get the stamina for his battle with the Papacy. All things are possible to him that trusts. A pastor who can believingly ask for great harvests, and then sows diligently, rarely comes into his barn with an empty wagon. The sheaves are filled up high. Spurgeon tells us of an earnest but uncouth minister who was sent into a desperately irreligious region; and in his first sermon he said to the people, “Look here! You may wriggle and twist, and twist, and you may harden your hearts as much as you like, but before this time twelvemonth, five hundred souls here will be converted. I have asked this of the Lord, and he has given it to me.” Spurgeon says that the sturdy faith of this man of prayer got its reward, and within the year there were over seven hundred hopeful conversions. We need the faith which believes Jesus when he says, “If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” If God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

3. With a more abundant life, believers will have a more abundant joy. A moping, sour, discontented, grumbling Christian, is a disgrace to the name he bears. If such a poor bulrush should ask a shrewd man of the world to embrace Christianity, the man might well reply, “I now have troubles enough of my own already without being troubled with such a doleful religion as yours is”; and he would be right. A cheerful, sunny-faced piety, which rejoices in the Lord always, wins converts. What a joyous brace of prisoners were those two men who were locked down in Philippics horrid dungeon at midnight! They are singing down there until the old Bastile rings again. The other prisoners hear them. The Lord has put a new song into their mouths. Those apostolic Christians had their mouths filled with holy joy, and their tongues with singing.

The best days of the Church have always been its singing days. Luther set all Germany to chanting the “Ein feste burg,” and the priests found that unless they could stop the contagion of holy song, the Reformation would spread like a fire in a stubble-field. John Wesley was a master-builder; but the walls of Methodism never would have gone up so rapidly if they had not been built to Charles Wesley’s music. That one hymn, 4 ‘Jesus lover of my soul,” gave the pitch to a thousand praise-meetings. In dear old Scotland Messrs. Moody and Sankey worked in partnership. The one preached the glorious Gospel; the other sang it. Edinburgh is becoming filled with “singing bands.” They are the outcome of revival joys. When a soul is filled with the joy of the Lord, the voice of song becomes as natural as it is with a group of happy children to shout for glee. Heaven is full of seraphic song, because heaven is alive with seraphic bliss. And he who has Jesus and his grace more abundantly in his soul, will “break forth into singing.” We even read in the prophet Zephaniah that the Lord God rejoices over Zion ‘’with singing “!

Now here are three marks of the more abundant life in Christ. One of them is the healthy vigor that sloughs off disease, and impurities, and makes a Christian strong in the Lord. The second is a stalwart faith. The third is peace of mind and joy in the Holy Ghost. All these are within the reach of every one who will strive after an abounding life in Jesus. He who asks receives; he who seeks shall find; he who knocks, shall be admitted to this full fellowship with Christ.