The gift HE gave...more than enough; the only one we'll ever need. :)

HIMSELF (part 1)
by A.B. Simpson

I wish to speak to you about Jesus, and Jesus only.

I often hear people say, "I wish I could get hold of Divine Healing, but I cannot". Sometimes they say "I have got it!" If I ask them "What have you got?" the answer is sometimes "I have got the blessing", sometimes it is "I have got the theory; sometimes it is "I have got the healing"; sometimes" I have got the sanctification". But I thank God that we have been taught that it is not the blessing, it is not the healing, it is not the sanctification, it is not the thing, it is not the it that you want, but it is something better. It is "the Christ"; it is Himself. How often that comes out in His word - "...Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses, ...Himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree." It is the person of Jesus Christ we want.

Plenty of people get the idea and do not get anything out of it. They get it into their head and into their conscience, and into their will; but somehow they do not get HIM into their life and spirit, because they have only that which is the outward expression and symbol of the spiritual reality. I once saw a picture of the constitution of the United States, very skillfully engraved in a copper plate, so that when you looked at it closely it was nothing more than a piece of writing, but when you looked at it from a distance, it was the face of George Washington. The face shone out in the shading of the letters at a little distance, and I saw a person, not the words, nor the ideas. I thought, "That is the way to look at the scriptures and understand the thoughts of God, to see in them the face of love, shining through and through; not ideas, nor doctrines, but Jesus Himself as the LIFE and source and sustaining Presence of all our life."

I prayed a long time to get sanctified, and sometimes I thought I had it. On one occasion I felt something, and I held on with a desperate grip for fear I should lose it, and kept awake the whole night fearing it would go, and, of course, it went with the next sensation and the next mood. Of course, I lost it because I did not hold on to Him. I had been taking a little water from the reservoir, when I might have ALL the time recieved from Him fullness through open channels.I went to meetings and heard people speak of joy. I even thought I had joy, but I did not keep it because I had not Himself as my joy. At last He said to me oh so tenderley 'My child just take ME, and let Me be in you the constant supply of all this MYSELF'. And when at last I got my eyes off my sanctification, and my experience of it, and just placed them on Christ in me, I found instead of an experience, the Christ larger than the moments need; the Christ that had all that I should ever need. This Christ was given to me at once, and forever and when I thus saw Him, it was such rest; it was all right and right forever for I had not only what I could hold that little hour, but also in Him, all that I should need the next and the next and so on, until sometimes I get a glimpse of what it will be a million years afterwards when we shall "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of our Father" (Matt.13:43) and have "all the fullness of God".