Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer's soul and they promote sanctification. We were not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration and the Christian who goes long without the experience of heart­warming will find himself tempted before long to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God. The soul is so constituted that it craves fulfilment from things outside itself and will embrace earthly joys for satisfaction when it cannot reach spiritual ones. Not for nothing did Satan draw Eve to see that the forbidden fruit grew on a tree which was 'pleasant to the eyes' and on a 'tree to be desired'. The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savouring the felt comforts of a Saviour's presence. When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, the soul of man will go in silent search of other lovers.

It is not altogether an easy task to say what enjoyment of Christ consists of and perhaps it would be best to start with the negative aspects of the subject. By spiritual elevation we do not have in mind simply the social joys which Christians have in company with one another. These are very real and very necessary, but they are not all that is referred to here under the theme of the enjoyment of God in the gospel. Neither do we refer to the boisterous movement of the arms which in some circles appears to be deemed essential to public worship. Again, we do not have any thought here of that grotesque medieval 'enjoyment' of Christ indulged in by certain nuns who claimed to hold with Christ a sort of spiritual flirtation, as their recorded meditations show.

By the enjoyment of the love of Christ in the heart of a believer we mean an experience of the,

love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.Romans 5:5

It is impossible to deny that this is an actual experience. It is not that we are conscious of our own love to God but that we are made wonderfully aware of his love to us. This text is to be understood as referring to an emotion registered in the consciousness of a true believer and resulting from the impression upon his human spirit of the love which God bears to him in Christ. The love of God is something which is always there towards the believer but he may not be always aware of it. Because the Lord has made himself accessible to us in the name of grace, it is our duty and privilege to seek this experience from him in these means till we are made the joyful partakers of it.

Once a believer has tasted this love of God in his soul he can never rest content till he has it again and again. The biblical enjoyment of the grace of Christ is not to be looked on as abnormal or extraordinary but as part of his earthly inheritance. It is for this reason that the Apostle Paul can refer to the Holy Spirit as the 'earnest of our inheritance' (Ephesians 1:14). The 'earnest' is more than the pledge or guarantee. It is the first part or the initial payment in kind. There can be no reasonable doubt that this is the meaning of the term 'earnest' in the Word of God. It denotes experience and cannot be confined to what is merely doctrinal or theoretical. Put simply, it indicates that in the teaching of the Apostles there is an enjoyment of God which is to be expected and to be looked for. There are gracious communications made to us in this life. The Spirit is the agent who generates a felt joy and exhilaration in the consciousness of the child of God.

It would be misleading to imagine that this experience of the love of Christ is a thing confined to the New Testament. It may well be and very probably is true that there is a fuller measure of this religious ecstasy poured on to the hearts of New Testament saints than before the work of Christ was completed on the cross. That would be consistent with the greater fulness associated with our age as the 'last times'. But there is a wealth of evidence to show that the Old Testament saints were very well aware of this inward enjoyment of God in the means of grace. What else is meant by the Psalmist when he refers to God as 'God my exceeding joy' (Psalm 43:4)? When he tells the Lord that he is the 'health of his countenance' he means to say that his face, reflecting his inward mood of dejection, is cast down with sorrow whenever he is unable to go to the house of the Lord to enjoy God in the means of grace. Similarly, the Psalmist speaks of God in terms which indicate clearly enough to us that he was in the habit of feeling an inward sensation of gladness and even ecstasy when the Spirit was poured out on his heart. To this effect are the many passages which say that we are to 'taste' the goodness of God (Psalm 34:8); that we are to 'pant' after him, 'thirst' for him, 'appear before him' and enjoy his 'lovingkindness' — all of which terms occur in this same psalm and indicate that the godly man is authorised to expect much more from God in this life than merely an enjoyment of him which is the result of mental understanding. Indeed, there are evidences in plenty that both in the Old and New Testament periods of the church the true people of God knew the heart-warming experiences of which we are speaking as they met publicly in the sanctuary.

To this effect is the 63rd Psalm, among others, where the Psalmist speaks of 'seeing thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary' and at once talks of having his soul 'satisfied as with marrow and fatness' and as rejoicing 'in the shadow of thy wings.'Psalm 63:2, 5, 7

Nothing other than the felt enjoyment of the love of God in his heart could compel him to declare: 'thy lovingkindness is better than life' (v. 3). On the other hand he falls into the deepest gloom and despondency whenever he is in circumstances which make it impossible to know this love of God in the gospel. So he cries out, 'Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech!' (Psalm 120:5).

How different all this is from those formalised and predictable religious exclamations which so often pass for piety and are no more the true sentiments of the heart than the sounding of brass or the clanking of a cymbal! How offensive to a God of knowledge must those repeated and reiterated utterances be which sound out so monotonously with 'amen' and 'alleluia' and are as devoid of felt inward enjoyment of God's love as a record when the needle sticks in the grooves! By all means let the believer tell out what he feels but let him not insult God by attempting to spice his often cold and ignorant devotions with sacred ejaculations he does not really mean. True excitement in the worship of God is not something which can be generated by flexing the vocal chords. It is a travesty to repeat over-worked exclamations or to parrot religious phraseology so as to sound pious. The worshipper who comes to God to get a felt blessing does well, but he must go about the task in a right manner and not think to work himself up into the love of God as though he were an athlete warming up on the track or a dervish lashing himself into a state of frenzy.

We are brought, then, to the important question as to how the believer goes about the work of finding the felt blessing. This is a spiritual art in itself and yet it is something we may learn from the Word of truth like any other aspect of our faith.

How do We Go to God for a Sense of His Love?⤒🔗

The way to get God's felt blessing on our hearts begins with an act of faith. That is to say we must believe that there is such a thing to be had in this life. If we do not expect or even believe in such experiences, the probability is that we shall know but little of them. If it is part of our imagined wisdom to scoff at religious experiences as such and to smile condescendingly when we hear devout men tell of their enjoyment of God in the means of grace, we are guilty of quenching the Spirit and are not coming in a hopeful or promising way to the throne of grace. By all means let us be dismissive of spurious and unwarranted experience. But there is, as we have sought to show, a true and scriptural enjoyment of Christ which is no fanaticism but the subjective fruit of the gospel.

Then, having become convinced that there is a genuine experience of a 'felt Christ' to be had on earth, we must go to God in prayer for it. The blessings of the covenant of grace are to be had by believing prayer and the principle holds good in this case also. We come to the throne of grace as suppliants to receive this choice favour of 'tasting, or being made subjectively conscious of the love God has to us in Christ.

It is the view of the present writer that we often go wrong at this point. It is the way of many to begin in prayer with strong affirmations of their love to God. But let us be careful. It is our personal belief that we would start off more promisingly if we began the other way round, that is, by admitting how very little we love God. The secret of getting the blessing from God is to put ourselves down as far as possible and to put him up as high as possible. In effect, therefore, we do well to start our prayer for the felt presence of his love by telling the Lord, not how much we love him, but how piteously little. Admittedly we cannot restrict prayer to a formula or to a routine of words of any sort, but we do need to begin always by taking a lowly place at his feet whenever we come to him and desire a blessing, as we ought at all times to do. It is our folly to become habituated to praying without any sense of God's power upon our hearts. We do harm to our souls and hinder our own progress in the knowledge of God if we treat prayer as an exercise of the mind only and do not expect to emerge from the presence of God with a fresh token of his love borne in upon us. It is a mistake to pray with our mouths alone or even with our gifts alone. Fluency is a good thing but it is not the highest form of prayer. In true prayer there is a concurrence of man's spirit with the Spirit of God. The Spirit assists us 'with groanings which cannot be uttered.' These are felt by the worshipper and are the birth-pangs which precede the blessing.

The dreadful possibility is that we learn to copy the prayers of those who are irreverent. For some people approach God in terms which are appropriate to an equal but which are entirely out of place in approaching the sublime Deity. We shall not know much enjoyment of God's rich favour till we have learned to talk to the Almighty in other tones of voice and with lower levels of self-abasement than those appropriate in human company. God expects us to treat him with becoming awe and shamefacedness. The irreverent prayer is atrocious because it is a contradiction in terms. Prayer is by definition a treating of God as his majesty demands.

At the same time there is a fault frequently found of an opposite kind. We are not to talk to God 'politely'. It is one of the many remarkable things about the prayers recorded in the Scriptures that they are reverent but not 'polite'. That is to say, God does not expect us to talk to him according to the codes of human etiquette. The 'please and thank you' state of mind is not that of the great men of prayer in the Word of God. We are, rather, to 'take hold of him' and wrestle with him as Jacob did. We are to cast ourselves down at his feet and then to make mighty demands upon him, like men in such deadly earnest to get his blessing that they would expire at his feet in an agony of effort if they did not succeed with him.

God does not, it seems to us, frequently yield up his blessing to us till we have spent a reasonable length of time in his presence. Concentration demands the quiet, steady settling of our minds upon God as we pray. We should learn to be with him for some considerable time if we are in earnest for the felt presence. Even then there will be many times when we shall rise from our knees with disappointment that we did not feel such sense of felt blessing as we yearned to have. At other times, however, those who seek the face of the Lord in downright earnest will rise up from the secret place with a 'joy unspeakable' and with an impression of Christ's love on their hearts which is unforgettable.

There is, however, the very real possibility in every Christian that he will learn to live at a distance from the love of Christ. Our corruption works in us a constant tendency to withdraw from Christ into the shadows. Days and even months can go past in the experience of the Lord's people in which they are virtual strangers to the inward enjoyment of the love of Christ in their hearts. The soul grows callous. Layers of worldliness or coldness, like coats of paint on an old door, overspread the soul till we become accustomed to feeling nothing, enjoying nothing, expecting nothing, knowing nothing of those heart­-warmings which are all-important to spiritual well-being. The next step is that the believer falls into a dead formalism. Prayer is got through as mere duty and routine. The Bible is read either to keep up appearances or to salve the weak voice of conscience. But spiritual exercises are now no longer enjoyed. The soul has no relish for the things of the Spirit. The consequence is that new companions are sought who are unfriendly to heart-religion. Then corners are cut in obedience to the Word of God.

Finally, offence is taken at the lives of those Christians in the fellowship who are walking with God in 'the power of godliness'. These are now criticised by the cold Christian as 'too narrow', 'too strict', 'carrying things too far', 'extremists', 'trouble-makers' and then, at last, 'not really belonging to our church because they are "old fashioned" or "bigoted."'

Countless believers have declined in this way. Part of the tragedy is that they have fallen into coldness while convincing themselves that they were serving God. The scholar at his books persuades himself that he is too busy to spend an hour each morning in secret devotions. The pastor feels he cannot devote time to the cultivation of his soul because he has too many letters to reply to or even sermons to prepare. The missionary cannot wait on the Lord as he used to because of the pressures of language-study, and later on, because of daily duties at the mission, and later on still, because of deputation work in the home country.

In these crafty ways does the devil lead God's people by a staircase which winds ever downwards. But let us recall in the midst of our busy life that we may do ourselves and the cause of God great harm by our neglect of the soul. Let us once lose the dew of our spiritual freshness and we are at once a ready prey to compromise. How have so many evils come into the church but through men's neglecting to cultivate daily fellowship with Christ? Like the Ephesian church in the book of Revelation, they have been busily engaged in their 'works' and 'labour' and 'patience' and even their zeal for orthodoxy. But in the eyes of the Saviour they have 'left their first love' (Revelation 2:2-4) and risk losing the very 'candlestick' altogether.

Even so today it is fearfully possible for a believer to be heavily involved in the fight against ecumenism or secularism or a thousand other evil things and yet to lose the tone and edge of his spirituality. But what does the Lord require of us? Is it not that we should walk close to him? Let no one imagine that the spending of much time conscientiously in daily fellowship with Christ will result in loss of service. Time spent with God in the secret place is never the cause of spiritual inefficiency. On the contrary, it is the highway to fresh vision and to new triumphs.

"To have prayed well is to have studied well." This motto was Luther's and announces to us the secret of his immense labours and abounding faithfulness.

We may conclude as we began, with a concern to revive in ourselves and in our brethren far more emphasis on heart-religion. As we view the state of the churches, this is the great priority everywhere. Nothing must be permitted to weaken our cultivation of fellowship with Christ. If one day's schedule is too full to allow us much time for secret prayer, then the next day must be made to yield more time for it as a compensation. Outward duties need themselves to be remoulded in our lives so as to become means of fellowship with God. What yields no spiritual profit at all to us in the course of life needs in all probability to be pruned out from our daily agenda altogether. The overwhelming concern of the Christian's life must surely be to live unto God, upon God and for God. What else can the familiar words mean where the apostle Paul tells us, 'For me to live is Christ?'

O! what a force for good even a handful of Christians would be who lived in near intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ! What prayers would be heard again in the earth as believers took hold of the sleeve of Christ and drew down the blessing! What power and authority for our preaching would flow out of his glorious 'fulness' (John 1:16)! What new life would be breathed into all our meetings if an army of M'Cheynes emerged from their closets melted with gospel-love! What new levels of excitement would there be in our services if preachers came into their pulpits clothed in the garments of visible holiness! In a word, what might not be done for God if only we were not so ignorant of him!

It is to be feared that our gospel suffers today because our credibility is low. If the enemies of our message could but discern in us a greater likeness to our Lord and Master they would at least listen to us more carefully, even if they would not believe our message. But where else is this credibility to come from except as we resolve to hold closer communion with the Lord himself? And how else are we to obtain a desire to hold this communion with him except as we learn to have our souls daily more filled with his Spirit? We are not yet 'reformed' in the best sense of that term till we excel in that experience of fellowship with Christ which made Knox's prayers more potent than an army.

Perhaps there is no more fitting illustration in our biographical literature of the theme we speak of than the experience of John Welsh on his deathbed. According to Robert Fleming's account, Welsh was so overcome with the felt enjoyment of God that he was sometimes overheard in prayer to say these words:

Lord, hold thy hand; it is enough. Thy servant is a clay vessel and can hold no more.¹