Mark 10:49

THE HIGHER LIFE

‘Rise; He calleth thee.’

Mark 10:49

What is religious life? A continual series of small progressions.

I. Now at a low level.—It may be that your religious state has gone down to a very low level. A hope that you once felt has died; and everything that is good lies buried under an accumulation of long neglect. The very Christ in you seems dead! You cannot live and pray now as you used to do. You cannot lift yourself out of the dust—the dust unto which, every day, your heart feels more and more assimilating. The text is for you.

II. Professing Christians.—Your religion wants elevating. Look at your own room, and your private devotions; your reading the Bible; the way you say your prayers; your attendance upon church; the Holy Communion—are these things what they might be, and what they ought to be? Is it real communion you have with God? Is not it very low, very dull, very lifeless? If you are religious at all, is not your standard very low down? Could not you raise it?

III. Those entangled.—You have got entangled; a wrong connection has thrown its chains about you. You are trammelled by a sin you hate, but yet you allow! You despise yourself for it. And yet you are going on with it! It only wants one resolute will; a real prayer; an honest determination; and one resting of your poor, weak self upon the Mighty God—and you will do it. Then you will feel so blessed; your conscience will be so quiet; without, you will be so happy when you can once say, ‘The snare is broken, and I am delivered!’

Many persons fail to ‘rise’ at all—because they do not try to be great Christians. The life of your imagination is greater than the life of your realisation; but there is a greater life than that of your imagination. And let me tell you that to be higher is to be nearer Jesus.